


Take Me Home

by Ardatli



Series: Profs!AU [2]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe – University/College, Background relationships: Jane Foster/Thor, Background relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark., F/M, Profs!AU, Runs concurrent with There’s No Textbook for This, their ages have all been thrown in a blender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:58:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1673846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis had a list. The items on the list changed as she got older, but the title never did. And Tommy-goddamn-Shepherd was never, ever going to be ‘Mr. Right.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon piece for Profs!AU, and timeline-wise runs concurrent with There’s No Textbook For This, starting from December (chapter five). It might not be necessary to read that one first, but you’ll probably get more out of this if you have. 
> 
> This fic has been a long time coming – I actually started writing it side by side with TnTFT at one point, set it aside so I could focus, and then lost track. It feels really good to come home again to this universe, so thank you to those of you who’ve stuck with me! 
> 
> Beta-read by the usual suspects (feebleapb and alessadrianna - thank you so much!), and the art is by AltheaK! 
> 
> This fic is part of the Work In Progress (The 'Finish Your S***') Big Bang.

Darcy Lewis had a list.

She’d started it in seventh grade with just four entries. ‘Mr. Right’ was at the top. She’d underlined that twice.

 _Single, romantic_ , it said, in pink glitter bubble handwriting. _Cute_.

 _Doesn’t snap bras_.

The list got longer as she got older, the folded scrap of loose-leaf transcribed painstakingly into the inner cover of two diaries, then spiral notebooks and day-timers as the years went by.  ‘ _Tall_ ’ had been added and erased a half-dozen times until it settled in at ‘ _taller than me_.’ _‘Altruistic_ ’ and ‘ _shows up on time’_ had stayed.

After Kevin, ‘ _takes ‘no’ for an answer’_ had made a permanent appearance. Peter had been responsible for ‘ _picks up his fucking socks_.’

She’d added _‘interested in girls’_ as an afterthought in August, after Teddy Altman had been so cruel as to break her ~~heart~~   ~~will to live~~ minor and short-lived fantasies of little blond and blue-eyed babies.

Tom Shepherd, as far as Darcy could tell, was exactly the kind of guy that the list was supposed to help her avoid. He was a brash corporate lawyer who spent too much time hanging around NYCU for a guy who’d graduated six years before. He’d had the hots for Kate Bishop as long as Darcy had known either of them. He was sarcastic, arrogant, unpredictable and totally annoying.

He probably hired someone to pick up his socks for him.

But she took him home anyway.

Seriously, though. Anyone who had caught even a _glimpse_ of those abs would understand why, and didn’t a girl deserve to have a little fun?

\--

She spotted him jogging up the stairs of the Arts building that night as she was leaving, the December wind biting in through even her good wool coat. Dr. Kaplan’s brother was wearing tailored slacks, and a really slick leather jacket, and yeah, she’d stopped to admire the view for a minute. He noticed her as he got to the top, hand raking through his white-blond hair in a way that kind of reminded her of his twin.  

“What are you doing here, Shepherd?” she asked. The wind kicked around her legs and for a moment she regretted the choice to stop and talk, but it wasn’t like she could pretend she hadn’t seen him. Not when he’d noticed the way her eyes had flickered over him as he got closer. “Don’t get enough of us during the day? Which, you have to explain that to me one day, because I’m sure you have an office of your own. Dr. Bishop’s gone home already.”

“Kate? Please. I am actually capable of recognizing a lost cause eventually. I’m looking for Billy,” he replied, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and glaring at the building as though it had personally offended him. Even frowning he was lickable; funny how that worked. Tom Shepherd looked just like Doctor Kaplan, except for the hair and eye color. But _Kaplan_ was so far off limits, and not even remotely her type, that he’d never really pinged on her radar beyond ‘gets cranky when the registrar schedules him for early morning classes.’

Tom was on an entirely different plane of hotness. And apparently, was no longer moping over the unattainable-slash-uninterested. Did that, or did that not, put him back on the market? 

_List item #1. Single._

“My idiot brother’s not answering his phone; I assumed he’d be here crying into his keyboard. Have you seen him?” Tom leaned back against the railing and tapped his fingers against it thoughtfully.

“Nope.” Darcy popped her lips on the ‘p’ and tucked her phone charger into the depths of her purse. “I was the only one in the building, and security gave me shit for it already.” She frowned at the rest of what he’d said, and was it worth pursuing when the wind was biting up her skirt? On the other hand, gossip. “What happened to Dr. K?”

Tom stopped tapping for a second, a mid-beat falter before starting up again, faster. “Nate’s moving out of their place.” As if that wasn’t a semi-regular occurrence, from what Darcy had been able to figure from the past three years. “If he took off to hang at Kate’s, I’m going to kill him.” He muttered that last one under his breath, poking at his phone with an angry jab before shoving it back in his pocket. His shoulders curled in for a second, and something about him seemed almost... lost. She blinked and it was gone, an optical illusion caused by the orange safety lights overhead.

He arched an eyebrow and grinned, rakish as ever. “Something important going down in the secretarial world that kept you past closing?”

Darcy stared him down, because that was the absolute last thing she needed: employment condescension from their resident PhD groupie. “Because all I do is photocopy stuff, right? And you were doing so well, Shepherd,” she clucked her tongue at him. “December’s a shitstorm on campus even if you’re not faculty.”

“I didn’t mean that!” Tom held up his hands in mock surrender. “I figured you’d have better things to do on a Friday night than hang around the ivy-covered professors. What does your boyfriend think?”

Oh, real subtle. He wasn’t even trying to hide the leading question, and he leaned on the iron railing like he had all night to wait for her answer. Darcy let the smile break through and she crossed her arms in front of her, her purse bumping against her shins. “I don’t have a boyfriend, and even if I did, I wouldn’t care what he thought.”

He smiled at that, a flash of an appraising grin and a flicker of his tongue against his lower lip that made her think all kinds of unholy things about abs and mouths. “Good to know.”

“Want to grab a drink?” She offered impulsively, before he could say anything that would make her regret it. Because it was Friday night, she had heels on, it had been months since she’d had a date, and it was getting freaking _cold_ to be standing around outside. “Unless you have more important things to do than hang out with a secretary.”

He frowned, like he was considering something, and shrugged. His eyes lingered on her for a half-minute too long to mean nothing. “Sure, what the hell. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

“Very nice,” Darcy snorted as she passed him, and he fell in easy step beside her. “You really know how to make a girl feel appreciated.”

\--

He did, though. His pickup lines might be the worst ever - and she’d gotten him to try them on her after they’d wrapped themselves around about three cocktails each - but he was amazingly talented with his mouth in other ways.

_List item #whatever. Good in bed. Or out of it. Cock fun times good hell yes._

Darcy slammed her head back against her living room wall, the sting of skin meeting plaster totally inconsequential against the heat of Tommy’s mouth on her groin, the pressure of his hands holding her by the thighs (and fuck, she hoped that would leave bruises, because once again, _fuck_ ), and the firm slide of his tongue over her clit as he knelt in front of her.

“Condoms are in the bedroom.”

“You first,” Tommy murmured against her body and the vibrations and hot breath made her toes curl and wrung a gasp out of her. “We’ve got time.”

She buried her hands in his hair and pulled him in closer, canted her hips out to give him better access. He slid his arms under her thighs, hiked one knee up over his shoulder – Christ, those shoulders! Her skirt pushed high over her hips and her panties had ended up somewhere on the other side of the room. He scraped his teeth across the hood of her clit and she bit back a shriek, at the hint of sharpness cutting through the haze.  He mouthed her, hot and wet, and his fingers slid up between her thighs.

“This okay?” He asked, sitting back and taking his mouth off of her, and no that was _not_ okay, not in the least. But stopping wasn’t what he was asking about, because his fingers circled the entrance to her cunt, drifting closer before he pulled them back. He slid his fingers into his mouth, eyes locked on hers, and oh, this was so very, very okay, because she was going to crawl backwards up the wall if he didn’t get _in_ there.

“Fuck yeah,” she ground out and he’d been waiting for it, moving like lightning once he had the ‘go.’ He slipped two fingers up and in, slick and so much thicker than she’d realized. He pulled them out again in a slow, sweet drag, crooked and beckoning and pressing up as his tongue flickered faster over her clit and hell _yes_.

He might be batting zero on her list for Mr. Right (okay, one; because ‘great in bed,’ check. ‘Stupidly good looking’ made two. Were there more?), but hell if Tommy Shepherd wasn’t a fucking brilliant idea for a ‘Mr. Right Now.’

YOLO, dudes.

\--

The apartment was a lot quieter with Tom gone, and this time of night Darcy could only crank her tunes up so high before Mrs. Migillicuddy downstairs started banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. The phone slid off her shoulder despite the way she had her head tipped to sandwich it in place. She gave up, dropped it on the coffee table amid the bundled tissues and bottles of polish, and punched ‘speaker’ with her pinkie. “Sorry about that; technical failure.”

“Is that what that was?” Jane’s voice crackled through the phone, kind of muffled. She could be running some spin cycle on one of her magnetocyclotron engine whatsits while talking as easily as she could be kicking back with a half-pint of chubby hubby. It was a whole lot easier not to ask. “So where were you tonight? I thought you might come by the lab, but obviously not if you’re calling me from home at three am.”

Blue. She was definitely in a mood for blue. Darcy hummed noncommittally as she ran her fingers across the row of pretty, shiny bottles and picked a vibrant royal blue. Glam smurf. “I went out with a guy.” She waited a beat. “Got laid.”

The clink and clatter from the other end definitely meant it was a chubby hubby night. Norway Boy must have missed his skype call time. “If you got laid, why are we on the phone right now?”

Darcy stretched, and yep, there it still was, that delicious ache deep in her muscles that said ‘yeah, we’re so doing this again sometime.’ “I kicked him out.” Cotton balls, toe separator, and… begin. “I wanted to paint my nails without snide commentary.”

“Darcy Amelia Lewis!”

“Relax, _mom_ ; he was cool with it.” Darcy stroked the paint across her toenails in a practiced motion. “He ‘doesn’t do afterglow.’” The color needed something else to spiff it up. Tom Shepherd wasn’t a silver-dot commemoration event; he had been more of a crackle. Rough and calloused edges covering up something altogether different.

Crackle it was.

Jane’s voice had taken on a vaguely confused edge to it, different than her usual state of slightly-disconnected fuzziness. “What _does_ he do?”

The smile spread across Darcy’s face and, if she could see herself in the mirror she would definitely have ended up applying some cliché to herself to go with it. Cat swallowing cream, maybe. And _that_ made her snicker, which was just going to confuse Jane more. Which was really typical of Darcy’s bestie; brilliant with science, not so good with people.

“Cunnilingus,” Darcy said, smug. She could still feel the places on her thighs where his thumbs had dug in, could still taste him in sense memory from when she’d returned the favor. The first time. “Spectacularly.”

\--

 **WendyK:** Are you breaking Jane?

 **Darcy** : She’s tough; she can take it (is she being a tattle-tale?)

 **WendyK:** Try harder! 8D (yes. You confound her)

 **Darcy** : She’s one to talk, ms. ‘banged a random and fell in love at a conference in freaking Norway’

 **WendyK:** You know what would be nice?

 **Darcy** : A norwegian thunder god to take to bed?

 **WendyK:** Money for conference travel at all

 **Darcy** : Take that one up w Carol. I got nothin.

 **WendyK:** I shouldve gone into compsci.

\--

Cue Sunday, when Darcy technically didn’t have to be in the office at all; but classes were over and exams about to start, which meant incoming chaos. A weekend in the empty office meant a chance to get through the stacks of paper that piled up during the end-of-term rush when everything was an emergency times ten, and it wasn’t just the students who were melting down.

Empty wasn’t entirely true; there was a student society meeting somewhere up on the third floor, and there would be profs holed up in their tiny little caves working on marking until the last second before the last deadline. But it was close enough that she could turn the music up and belt along with it, with no worries about being interrupted by a cranky downstairs neighbor with no idea of what constituted a classic jam.

“Life is old there, older than the trees-”

This stack for the shredder, that one for the filing cabinet before it overflowed-

“Younger than the mountains-” And she was just getting a real groove going, when a voice interrupted her from the doorway that had been totally empty a second before.

“John Denver? And here I thought you were cooler than that.” Tom took off his sunglasses and twirled them between his fingers, leaning insouciantly against the door frame.

“Blowin’ like the breeze. I am cool.” Darcy gestured at him. The cap on the end of her pen flew off and rattled across her desk. “I am so frosty that my coolness levels are entirely off your radar.” She poked at the keyboard with the end of her pen and the music shut off. Tom’s eyes crinkled a little bit at the corner when he smiled, and had she ever seen him do that before? She couldn’t quite be sure. Maybe Friday night, once, somewhere between the gasping and the cursing.

She slouched back in her seat, being totally, absolutely casual with the guy she’d seen naked not two days before. It had been a really _good_ naked, though, and that deserved some special consideration. “What brings you in here in a Sunday?”

Tom looked her up and down, his glasses twirling around his fingers, up and over and back again. “I’ve come to rescue you from your terrible musical taste.”

“Is this the way you seduce a girl?” Darcy teased him back. There was a little warning bell going off somewhere in the back of her brain – it sounded a bit like Jane, or maybe like her mother – but hell. How often did she get this kind of attention from a guy, even if it was just the aftereffects of a semi-random hookup?

“You’ve got things backwards, Lewis,” Tom replied, and the glasses stopped circling quite so quickly. “As I recall, you were the one who asked me out.”

“Threatened by a liberated woman, Shepherd?”

“If that’s what gets you going, I could pretend to be.” He stayed leaning against the doorframe like he was putting down roots there. “I was thinking about asking for your phone number, but now I’m not so sure.”

Darcy grabbed for a pad of post-its and her pen, flashed her eyes up and over him one more time. The slouch, the teasing, the memory of those fingers over and inside her, the things he knew how to do with his mouth – yeah, she’d do that again. “You could always have gotten it from your brother.” She scribbled her digits on the little sticky pad before she could second-guess herself. “Here-”

He reached for it and she pulled it away before his fingers could close around the post-it. A thrill of nerves shot through her for a second, but she wasn’t a kid and this wasn’t her first rodeo. Time for opening negotiations. He tried to snag the paper again, and she twitched it out of his grasp. “One question first. Is this for dating, or for fucking? Because the ground rules are different.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and he went still. “Ground rules?” She could practically _see_ the gears turning and the little hamsters running around on their wheels while he tried to stay one step ahead.

“Oh yeah. If we’re dating, it’s just you and me. Nothing against poly, but I don’t have that kind of attention span.”

“And fucking?”

“More negotiable.”

That got a surprised grin and score one for Darcy, because somehow she doubted he’d been expecting that. Or maybe he had and was down with it.

He stepped closer, reached for it, and she pulled away. He leaned in, one hand on the desk; it was a game now, and she held it back, further, further again- Tom grabbed the arm of her chair, reached across her body (oh, that was a very nice cologne choice; she approved), and plucked it from her fingers. “How about we try for one date first and see what happens?” He was being unfair. Because asking her that while he was braced above her, almost straddling her knees, one hand on each of her chair arms and smelling so good?

Dirty pool.

She waited a beat, pretending to consider it before answering him. “Acceptable.” She wasn’t entirely ruled by her hormones, even if her pulse was maybe racing a little.

He stayed there a second longer, his blond hair (natural, she now knew) flopping into his eyes, his weekend-casual t-shirt hugging those lean biceps, and a twinkle of some kind in his eye. They were too green, almost fake in their amazing green-ness, but she was 90% sure he wasn’t wearing contacts. She’d be able to tell from this close.

Was he - she could - his lips were right _there_ \- but no. He poked her glasses back up her nose, then pushed himself up and turned, grabbed her pen and scribbled a phone number on the intake form sitting on her desk

“Dinner Friday?” He asked, as casual as you please. “Text me your address; I can pick you up for eight.”

“Yeah,” Darcy caught herself saying, before she had any time at all to think it over. “Sure, sounds good.”

And then he was gone, heading out the door with his sunglasses in his hand, his other hand in his pocket, and a hint of a swagger in his step. Darcy watched him go, until he turned the corner in the hallway and vanished from sight.

Well, now. That was a thing.

\--

_#15: Confident._

\--

 **Darcy:** You didn’t tell me where we were going.

 **Hottie, Esq:** Sure I did; dinner.

 **Darcy:** That covers a lot of turf. No hints?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Learn to embrace surprises.

 **Darcy:** I need a dress code, or I stg I’m showing up in a hula outfit.

 **Hottie, Esq:** I double dog dare you.

 **Darcy:** You’re, like, 12, aren’t you?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.

 **Hottie, Esq:** Fine. Dress for cocktails. I only do black tie for weddings. 

 **Darcy:** There go all my James Bond fantasies.

 **Hottie, Esq:** …I could be convinced.

 **Hottie, Esq:** Do you actually own a hula outfit?

 **Darcy:** You might never know.

\--

_#3. Takes ‘no’ for an answer._

_\--_

Googling ‘cocktail dress’ got her about a billion shopping sites and a handful of ‘dress codes explained’ that all kind of boiled down to the same thing: not something Darcy owned. Retro, on the other hand, she could rock like nobody’s business. While the awesome black vintage shirtwaist dress didn’t scream ‘cocktail party,’ red shoes and Super Vixen red lips could fix just about anything.

From the look on Tom’s face when he pulled up to her apartment building in his shiny silver sportscar, a fancy two-seater BMW, he didn’t exactly mind the change in plans. He seriously had no right to be as pretty as he was, enough that she didn’t even feel weird about using the word ‘pretty’ to describe a guy. The dark green v-neck he had on beneath the blazer dipped down just low enough to show a hint of collarbone, and the color made his eyes pop all the more vividly. His ridiculous shock of white-blond hair was gelled back, not solid. Just enough to make it look like it had when he’d rolled out of her bed and stretched, flexing every one of those lean muscles.

Tom was grinning when she pulled her eyes away from the way the denim snugged along the curve of his ass, and she shrugged to hide the way her cheeks wanted to go pink. “Looking good there, hoss.” He didn’t blink at the compliment, just flashed her that same wicked smile and held the door open for her to slide in.

She had a moment of sheer ‘what the _fuck_ am I doing here’ as he jogged around the back to the driver’s side door – and seriously, he had to be out of his mind. But oh, the key turned and the engine revved, and the car kicked it into gear like they weren’t moving at all. _Smooth like buttah,_ she thought a bit hysterically, the world slipping by on either side like a dream, or a movie greenscreen.

For a moment like that, she could almost understand making car payments in New York.

He had a sweet sound system too, and it only took her a second to figure out the touch-screen and the dials. Tom tried to smack her hand away from the controls without losing his grip on the wheel, but he was too slow. Music blasted out of about five different speakers all around them and it took her a second to place the disco beats.

_“Lose yourself to dance!”_

“Daft Punk?” Darcy asked, shifting back in her seat to get a better look at this _total stranger_ she was apparently riding with. “And you give me shit about _my_ music? At least John Denver’s a total classic.”

“Yeeeee-haw,” Tom drawled, smirking. “If you like your banjos twangy. Besides; robots are cool.” He snapped off the music. She fought him for it, turning it back on but at about half volume, and he shot her a look like she’d confused his poor little brain. She stuck out her tongue, and he ignored her in favor of watching the road.

Weirdly, the restaurant Tom had picked wasn’t one of the flashy trendy places that dotted Midtown, but an out-of-the-way Asian fusion place with a half-burned out sign, a sound system playing mellow techno, and prices on the plastic-coated menus that didn’t make her eyes bleed.

It was also where she learned that Tom hadn’t known he had a twin until he was eighteen. That he’d chosen corporate law because he wouldn’t feel bad about loving the rush when he won. And that no human being alive could possibly be faster with chopsticks. He fed her the last maki even after stabbing it out from under her, though, because he wasn’t _actually_ a jerk.

The sky had gone cloudy and the streets damp by the time they wandered out again, the streetlights casting a yellow glow on the clouds and the water in the gutters. There was a moment when the little side street was empty, and Tom’s shadow fell long across the sidewalk. Darcy had never needed a trilby, a mink stole and a cigarette holder more in her life. “So aren’t you going to ask me?” she broke the easy silence, and Tom arched an eyebrow. “What’s a nice dame like me doing in a place like this?”

He barked a laugh, and offered his elbow. “Nah. I have a pretty good idea why,” he answered, and squeezed his arm for a second when she tucked her hand into the crook of it. “I’m the sharpest fellow on the block, see?” The Jersey accent got thick as syrup, all mobster-sex, and for a moment she half-expected the door in the wall to open and reveal a speakeasy.

“You need a hat,” she decided aloud, turning as they got back to his car, parked snug against the curb. Some of his bangs had escaped the gel and she slid her fingers through them, pushed them back away from his face. His hands were on her hips before she could do anything else, her ass pushed back against the door of his car. The cold seeped through her skirt, the ridge of the window pressed into her thighs. His mouth was warm, though, warm and insistent, and it was enough to kiss back, to arch her back and push her body against his, to fist her hands in his coat and –

–  And hold him at bay, or pull him in? It was too much all of a sudden, hips and mouths and the stroke of his thumbs on her waist. Drums pounded in her ears, the rush of her pulse too damn loud to think through.

Memories flooded her brain: the rough brush of his lips against the skin of her stomach, a little chapped, more tender than she’d expected; the white marks on his lip where he bit down, trembling with the effort of keeping himself under control. His cock in her hand and his whole body taut as a bow and rocking up into her; his fingers inside her, long and thick, curled and pressing, coaxing her forward and up and forward again, his tongue laving soft and wet as tears beaded in the corners of her eyes.

Her body remembered, that was for damn sure. She was slippery and hot between her thighs, the insistent, burning _empty_ ache blossoming behind her belly and spreading along her limbs.

He was overwhelming, the smell of him everywhere around her and the only thing she wanted to do was take him home and get their clothes off _rightthehellnow_ and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

It was too much power to give to someone she really only kind of barely knew.

“Woah there, Speedy.” She pushed him back. To see if she could, to see if he would listen, to see what would happen.

Tom’s hand left her thigh, the air rushing in cold where the heat of his palm had been. He stopped nuzzling at her neck, took a step back. Not out of her bubble entirely, but enough that he wasn’t so _in her space_. He was rock hard, the bulge in his pants making her fucking mouth water, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Whatever makes you happy, doll,” he joked, the persona sliding back into place like a shield. He held his hands up in the air in easy surrender, his lips pink and red from kissing and from her lipstick. She had space to regroup, or change her mind, or bail out entirely.

If she wanted to.

She didn’t.

She _could_ , and that was enough.

“Darce? You okay?” He frowned, his own voice back, concern and a bit of confusion warring it out in his eyes. His hand twitched toward her then fell back to his side. Like he’d remembered she’d stopped him, and he’d checked himself.

“Take me home,” she made the decision. His face went carefully blank and then got cheerful again, as he packed his emotions away in whatever neat little brainbox he had set aside marked ‘feelings.’

“Sure,” he said easily, with none of the ‘ _aw baby_ ’s and ‘ _but we were having fun_ ’s that she’d braced for. Tom’s shoulders rounded under his coat, but he shrugged easily. “We should do this again sometime,” he said instead, and traced her lips with hungry eyes. “If you want.”

Boom. Ovary explosion. Just like that. Darcy smiled. “You’re invited, dummy.” He stopped talking, his expression still cautious and wary. “Bed’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than a curbside makeout.” She grabbed his lapel, watched the tension change in his shoulders and his jaw. He hesitated, but fell into her on the second tug.

The red lips she left on his neck this time were no accident, and the way he ground in against her thigh when she pushed it between his legs suggested he didn’t really mind.

“How about my place?” Tom suggested, breathless, by the time they were sitting in the car. “It’s closer.” The pink in his cheeks could have been from the weather. He shifted in his seat like he was hoping she wouldn’t notice the reason he was uncomfortable. They’d totally get arrested if she did anything about it now, like unzip his pants and slide her hand down there the way she wanted to.   

Though if she was going to get a police record, getting pulled over for giving a blowie in a moving vehicle was one hell of a way to go. “Can you get us there in under ten?” His whole face lit up at the question, the wicked grin spreading to his eyes, and she probably should have been more worried than she was.

“Time me.” He laughed and put the car in gear, and the world turned into a grey, black and neon set of streaks outside the car windows.

\--

He didn’t touch her again, not in the elevator, not in the hallway before he fumbled with his keys, not even once the door swung closed behind them and they were standing less than six inches apart in the dark front hall of his apartment. He’d brought her to his place, though, so it didn’t seem likely that he’d changed his mind… “Waiting for anything in particular?” she asked, a purr in her voice.

Tom smirked, his features picked out only by the flicker of a streetlight outside. She didn’t need more light to see the intensity of it, though, the way he stared at her, and the flicker of his tongue over his lips. “Permission,” he replied, the same husky softness in his voice, and he took half a step toward her. He was close enough that she could feel his body heat. “I’m not going to make you uncomfortable again.”

He skimmed his hands down along her sides, tracing the curve of her breasts, the snug fit of the dress around her waist, down to her ass – and all from about half an inch away, his hands never actually making contact. Pressure coiled deep down inside, echoed in a throb from her clit – the clit he apparently had no immediate plans to get to. Tom was a little bit taller than she was, even in her heels, but tipping her chin up to lean in to his mouth only got him leaning back to keep the distance. She nipped at air instead of his chin, and stamped her foot in frustration.

“Use your words,” Tom said. His smirk widened, his green eyes dark and fixed on her. “If you want me, you’re calling the shots.” She could stick out her tongue and lick him, he was so close now; it would only take a second to jump him, rub against him like a cat in heat, the way he’d pressed his hips against hers back at the car. “Tell me what you want me to do,” he said, leaning in close, his mouth hovering an inch or two away, his lips all plush and pink. “And I’m all yours.”

“Kiss me,” she ordered, because she was going to curl up and die if he didn’t.

His breath caught. She tipped her chin up as he started to close the distance, but then he stopped again. “With or without tongue?” Tom murmured, his voice a low rumble.

“With. But just the tip,” she instructed. And the bossier she got the more his pupils dilated and his breath stuttered in his chest, and wasn’t that an interesting surprise? “None of that fucking-my-throat thing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He touched his lips to hers, a gentle brush that was worse than a tease, his hands held carefully out to his sides. Their mouths were the only things that touched, that first caress of lips turning into more pressure, his mouth opening to hers with all his slick heat. His tongue traced the seal of her lips, testing, and it was pure instinct to let him in. He kissed her, wet and filthy and exactly to order. He didn’t resist when she grabbed his shirt and pulled him down closer, just tilted his head to take advantage of the better angle. But he still didn’t touch.

“What’s with the keep-away act?” she asked, when she resurfaced for air. Her lips thrummed from the pressure, the faint impression from where he’d bitten down on the swell of her bottom lip. “You have magic hands, Mr. Shepherd, esquire. I thought they came with the package deal.”

“You didn’t say ‘mother may-I,’” Tom purred, his eyes almost completely dark and the hard line of his cock pressed hard against her hip. He traced the air just over her body, close enough that she could almost feel his touch, but he refused to make contact.  

“You are such an asshole,” Darcy breathed out. But oh, she could have fun with this. Assuming he actually meant it.

“So I’ve been told.”

Could he really keep that distance? The hell with it. She went in for a kiss and he backed up again, just enough to stay out of range. Darcy pouted. “You might want to start working on that. It can be kind of a turn-off.” She paused, then, “you’re serious?”

He nodded. “Not gonna do anything you don’t want.” And there was something sad and too old in his eyes, just for a second. “We can mix it up next time, if you get bored with bossing me around,” he joked, and the moment was gone. “Shit, Darce; you have lips that could kill a man. When you talk dirty, it’s like my very own porn flick, live and in person. You’re deadly.” The switch had flipped and he was back to ridiculous and flippant, giving her leering praise that she could only take half as seriously as the halfway that he meant it.

“Gonna pretend that’s a compliment, horndog.” Now what? Choices, choices.

She could tell him to get naked and kneel, and he’d probably do it; or walk him over to the couch and ask him to strip her down with his teeth. She had a new toy, fresh and just out of the package, and like every freaking Christmas morning, she had to take a second to figure out what to play with first. What kind of thing did he like? He liked her to talk dirty. She didn’t have a problem with that.

“Hands on my hips,” she ordered. He did it immediately, fingers curling around the curves at her sides, his thumbs pressing into the divot above her hipbones. “Harder; I’m not gonna break. And kiss me again.” He dug his fingers in, strong and firm, the pressure there a grounding force as they locked lips again. His hands flexed and held her steady; she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. He explored her mouth as though she held her secrets there, with flickering tongue and his teeth nibbling against her lip.

“Tits,” she gasped, breaking the seal of their mouths long enough to get some words out into the heated air. “Hands, now.” The pressure of his body was good, his thigh not quite far enough between her thighs to be of any use, and his cock heavy and full through the barrier of their clothes. But her nipples were drawn taut and aching, and her cunt throbbed in sympathetic rhythm. She wanted to climb him, wind around him, mount him right there against the wall and fuck herself on him, find out how limber he was, how long he could hold her legs up on his shoulders-

Tom’s hands slid up her sides, stroked the lines of her bra around the curve of her back, then cupped and held the weight of her breasts. He groaned into her mouth and she bit away the sound. “Touch my nipples,” she ordered, and he did it, finding his way under the padding of her bra cups. “Stroke them between your fingers,” and yeah, she was getting into the spirit of the thing now. He started to push her back against the wall, his hands splayed over her breasts and her nipples caught between his forefingers and his thumbs. They burned and tingled, the slow circles he was making with his fingers not enough.

He stopped himself but she grabbed for his ass and pulled him in close. “I’m hard for you,” Darcy tried, and she felt more than a little bit silly, but the involuntary thrust of Tom’s hips suggested she was on the right track there. His hands were _definitely_ doing it for her, the lace of her bra scratching her skin with the motion. “You can feel it. You like my tits, don’t you?”

“Eighth and ninth wonders of the world,” Tom agreed immediately, and rocked into her at the urging of her hands. “Tell me,” he urged, the tips of his ears gone pink. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

Oh man; so many options, so little time to decide. Instead of answering right away she ran her hands over the firm swells of his ass, pulled his shirt out of his waistband and slid her hands up underneath. His skin was soft; she remembered that from last time. Surprisingly so, really. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would manscape, but there you go.

“First-” Uh. _Opportunity of a lifetime, Darce. Don’t waste it._

“You’re gonna pin me against the wall,” she decided triumphantly. “Touch me everywhere you want. I want you to put your mouth all over my boobs, and then we’re going to rut like horny teenagers,” she said, and he laughed. “Because I like your dick and the way it feels with fabric over it.”

Tommy stopped laughing. “Hnnnng,” he said, and bit at the place her neck curved into her shoulder.

 _Now_ she was on a roll. “After that we’re going to go over to your couch, and you’re getting naked. I’m going to suck you for a while, get you good and hard for me. Then you’re going to put a condom on, and I’m going to ride you like a mechanical bull on ladies night. I come first, you come when I say you can.” She wound down, running out of ideas. Tom stared at her like she was a mix of the second coming and a Dallas cheerleader. It was a good stare, and one she could get very used to seeing. “So?” she demanded, her lips curling up into a wide and impossible grin. “What are you waiting for now?”

“Nothing at all,” Tom replied. In less than a second he had her back against the wall, braced with a thigh between her legs, and the buttons on the front of her dress open. She shoved his jacket off his shoulders and it hit the floor with a jangle of keys. The whole thing turned into a wrestling match a second later as he tried to get his hands inside her bra while she was in the middle of pulling his t-shirt up to get it off.

A handful of seconds of struggle, the sound of a few popped stitches and some curse words later, and she was up against the wall again. The top of her dress was unbuttoned and down around her waist, her bra cups pushed aside so that her boobs were bare but still supported by the industrial-strength underwire. Tom’s shirt had joined his jacket in a pile on the floor, his lean, spare torso all hers to run her hands over. His mouth left trails of heat across her skin, his tongue running roughly over first one nipple and then the other, his lips closing over each one in turn. He sucked on them, rolled them between his lips, his hands locked under her ass to keep her at the right height.

Darcy rolled her hips into him, her legs wrapped around his waist. His dick was too far away and she was too high up to get anything going there, not yet, but his to-die-for abs were as firm as she remembered. She leaned back against the wall, her hands buried in the hair on the back of his head, and she arched to get a better angle. If she could just, and he was right _there_ – she wriggled too much and Tom almost dropped her, grabbing at her to keep her from tumbling to the floor.

“You break it, you bought it.” Darcy got the giggles, and Tom bit her on the boob in retaliation. The sting and the rush of blood set her skin on fire, her nipples hard enough now to cut glass. She was humid between her thighs; if she snaked her hand down between their bodies now she’d be wet and ready, so open and hungry for him.

He ran his hands up her legss as he readjusted his hold, his fingers dancing lightly up her nylon-covered thighs until-

Tom raised his head from the pattern he was drawing on her chest with his tongue, and stared at her with glazed-over eyes. “You’re wearing thigh-highs?” he asked, as his fingers went wandering along the lacy top edges of her stockings. The garter belt had been a last-minute decision, something fun and sexy to go along with the shirtwaist, the seams that ran up the backs of her thighs making her feel like a million goddamn bucks before she’d stepped out of the house that night. Tom pressed his hands against her, ran his fingers over the border of lace and skin, all the way around her thighs, up the ribbon clips and back. “Fuck,” he swore reverently, in a tone of voice that sounded like a prayer.

“You want me to leave them on?” Darcy asked, taking the opportunity to grab his face and kiss him, with more tongue than teasing this time, hot and slick and filthy.

 “Yes. Shit, Darce – your legs; can I?” He wasn’t teasing her any more, he was begging, needy and open, his fingers dancing across the sensitive skin behind her knees, then back up her thighs.

_Could he what?_

Oh, right!

 “Yeah,” she agreed lustily, without having the first clue what he actually wanted. But any combination of his body and her thighs was bound to be at least worth trying once. He set her down gently and dropped to his knees, pushing her skirt up and away to expose her legs and parts of her panties. She braced, waiting for the pressure of his tongue on her cunt, pressing the wet fabric up against her clit-

Instead, she got his bottom lip dragging slow against the inside of her left thigh, dry and soft. He mouthed at the divot between her thigh and pubic mound, traced the tip of his tongue back down, then sucked and nibbled all the way up and around the edge of the lace tops of her stockings. His fingers followed, nimble and sure, drawing lines over her skin, through the cooling trail left by his tongue, over and around until she shook and rocked in his hands, trying to chase the sensation that was just this side of too much and not enough.

“You, couch, naked, now,” Darcy instructed, and Tom laughed at the tremble in her voice. He made it there before her, flung himself backwards and all but bounced off the cushions again. He dug in his back pocket for his wallet, and then in that for a foil-wrapped packet that he stuck between his teeth.

“You coming, or what?” Tom asked, sprawling across the couch, his legs open. She kicked off her shoes and crossed the room, her dress still hanging from her hips. He was hard as hell, his pants tenting obscenely, the long vee of his stomach muscles and hips mouth-wateringly taut.

She wanted to lick him, so she did. His whole stomach tensed up as she dropped to her knees on the floor in front of him, dragged the flat of her tongue across his ridiculous abs and up toward one of his hard little nipples. Tom shuddered, rolling his hips up against her boobs as she leaned over him, his lips parting and his knuckles going tight on the back of the couch cushions.

And that was about enough of that as far as foreplay went. Darcy fumbled for Tom’s zipper and dragged it down. His boxer briefs clung to the shape of his dick, practically soaked through at the tip. He yelped when she slid her fingers under the elastic and pushed them down his thighs. “Your hands are cold!”

“Wuss,” Darcy snorted, and sank her mouth down on his dick. Tom let out a low shuddering groan that made her toes curl. He was watching her when she looked up at him, his mouth open, just staring as she worked her mouth over the head of his cock. He tasted about as good as dicks ever did, skin and sweat and the funny salt-sour taste of pre-come. She swiped around the rim with her tongue, rolled his foreskin down with her lips and pulled off again until he popped out of her mouth, all spit-slick and gleaming.

She’d gotten into a fight with a dorm-mate once, over whether sucking dick was really ‘a symptom of everything unliberating about the so-called sexual revolution,’ but fuck that. He smelled good and tasted better, all thick with musk and sex.

There was nothing in the world like it, his skin velvet-soft and totally vulnerable, the way he watched her with half-lidded eyes like she was a fucking goddess (or a goddess of fucking?) just for leaving some faint red lipstick smears around his iron-hard shaft. And there – she pressed a firm kiss right at the bottom to leave a trace of color there too. _Marked you._

He reached for her, his hands broad and warm on her arms. “Get up here,” he said, adding “please” almost as an afterthought. The condom went on and she straddled him, her dress ending up in a pile on the floor after he tugged it off over her head. Bra and panties too, and he didn’t even stop to look at them, even though they were freaking expensive. Didn’t matter. She was grinding down against the base of his dick, her clit getting some serious attention for the first time that night, and if he wanted to chew the goddamn things off with his teeth she wouldn’t have blinked.

The stockings stayed on.

 

 

 

She braced her arms on the back of the couch, one on either side of his head, and lowered herself down onto him. Tom kissed her, fierce and desperately needy, snapping his hips up to bury himself balls-deep inside. His hand splayed out against the small of her back, giving himself leverage. He thrust into her, as deep as anyone ever had and thicker than most, and she pushed down to meet him.

That ache inside was worse, not better, even now that he was filling her up, stroking hard and fast against the front of her cunt. She could move, just a little, and there – “There!” Darcy yelped, and saw stars.

“Just like that,” she ordered, and tried to find that angle again, the way they’d moved. There wasn’t nearly enough friction in her life at the moment, though; not to get her where she wanted to go. Tom’s eyes glazed over with raw lust, one hand on her chest and playing with her nipples, the other steady right above her ass. “And get your hand between us,” she tried. Maybe he’d listen, maybe he wouldn’t. He did, sliding his hand down her stomach, where her skin prickled sharply with sweat, between their bodies, through the wet curls of hair, and then between the folds of skin to where her clit was almost-but-not-quite touching his pelvis.

She needed him, needed it, coils of fire building in her cunt and the pressure like a boiler gathering between her hips. His fingers slid home, one on either side of her clit, just enough pressure there to rub against and rub against and if he stopped now she was going to kill him into itty bitty pieces and she _told_ him that because right there just like that _OH._

Darcy convulsed, shook and arched, rocked her hips frantically into Tom, her clit against his fingers, stroked up and down on his dick to feel it all along the oversensitive walls of her cunt. Her throat stung raw, possibly from yelling, and the crooks of her knees, the small of her back, the nape of her neck – all of it stung with salt and prickled with wetness. “God _damn,_ ” she cursed weakly, collapsing forward and burying her face into the crook of Tom’s neck.

He pushed up into her, gently now and tender, once, twice. He was still hard, hadn’t finished yet. When she finally lifted her head to check, her breathing settling back to normal, he was biting his lip white from strain.

“Go,” Darcy murmured against his lips, and kissed him. He clung to her with both hands, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. Tom’s head dropped back, his eyes squeezed tightly closed, his whole body arching and desperate. Everything burned, the drag of his dick inside her exquisitely sensitive now, playing on nerves that had woken up and started buzzing. And still he didn’t finish, the flush burning dark red down his chest and his ears hot pink.

She told him to come, and he did. Her name was on his lips in a choked-out sob, his fingers digging bruises into her hips.

His O-face wasn’t what she’d expected, something almost vulnerable in the arc of his throat and the way his eyes squeezed shut, in the flush that turned him red from his ears to his nipples. Tommy broke open under her and she saw it happen, and just as quickly, she saw it vanish.

Tommy opened his eyes and grinned at her, wolfish and endearing, and rolled his hips one last time before letting himself slide out. She stayed where she was, hands on the back of the couch, propped up over him while he tied the condom off and tossed it into the wastepaper basket in the corner. That done, though, she let go and settled down, lay her skin against his and wrapped herself up in him. There was nothing in the world wrong with a little wham-bam, but this time she wanted skin-on-skin. Just for a minute.

 _Thump-bump. Thump-bump._ Darcy tapped on Tommy’s chest in rhythm with the slowing pounding of his heart. He covered her hand with his and turned his face in to nuzzle at the side of her head, breathing deep. “Are you sniffing my hair, you weirdo?” She murmured it, traced her fingertips through the fine, soft stubble at the nape of his neck.

“Gonna take a curl as a trophy,” Tommy teased her, “for my collection.” But he didn’t move and she didn’t make him.

The sweat drying in prickles on her skin made her restless about the same time that Tommy’s knee started bouncing, the first sign. Time to bail. She bit Tommy on the shoulder and sucked at the spot. Not hard enough to leave a hickey, just a pink spot that he’d have to look at in the shower the next day, and remember.

“Leaving?” Tommy asked casually. He stretched out along the couch as she pried herself off him. His hands pressed back against the arm of the couch, his body long and languid like a cat’s. His dick flopped against his thigh, almost back to soft. She could probably get him going again, if she wanted to, just, get down and suck on him for a while and make the party last a little longer.

Or save it in case there was a next time, so she hadn’t used up all her tricks in the first couple of rounds.

“Once I use your shower,” Darcy decided aloud. Her dress was – there, and her bra was on the chair… “I have plans tomorrow.” It wasn’t like staying was actually an option; he hadn’t offered, and ‘walk of shame’ hadn’t been on her to-do list since freshman year.

Tom snorted, and scratched idly at his thigh. “Hot date?” he asked, a razorblade slide at the very edge of his voice.

Where the hell were her underpants? “Oh yeah,” Darcy snorted. “Like I have time for more than one of you.” His chest rose and fell more deeply than it had before. “I have farmer’s market plans that include things like fancy lattes with the girls, and telling magnificent stories about your sexual prowess.” She’d had them on when he’d pinned her against the wall, and then they’d moved to the couch, and he’d pulled them down her legs like a drowning man struggling for air-

“In that case,” Tommy shifted on the couch, but she wasn’t paying him any attention at all, “don’t let me keep you,” he finished, and the tone of _smug_ was so thick in his voice that she had to laugh.

“If you’re hoping to use me to get an ‘in’ with my ladies, you are hopelessly off-base,” Darcy informed him archly, tossing her head and hooking her bra back in place. Bra-and-garter-belt wasn’t the hottest of looks, but it was better than holding everything while she looked under the couch. “Jane’s obsessed with a six-foot-huge astrophysicist from Stjørdalshalsen, and you’re really not Wendy’s type.”

There nothing under the couch except floor – and one nasty old gym sock – and Darcy sat up on her knees with a dark frown. “What the hell-”

“Looking for these?” Tommy dangled her undies from one finger, a puckish grin on his face. He pulled them away as she reached for them. She lunged, he grabbed her around the waist with his other arm, and she collapsed on top of him long enough to roll their hips together and slide her tongue into his mouth. And then grab her underpants out of his hand while he was totally distracted.

“Gotcha,” Darcy crowed, sliding off of Tommy and landing with her butt on the floor. “Better luck next time, loser.”

He pulled her hair, she flipped him off like the _total grownup_ that she was, and they were both laughing like idiots by the time he was on the phone calling her a cab, sweatpants hanging low on his slim hips and absolutely fuck-all else on.

He didn’t catch her admiring the view. She was okay with not having to explain herself. Maybe this would work after all.    

 

\--

 **Darcy:** Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg.

 **Hottie, Esq:** It’s early in the day to be into the eggnog, isn’t it?

 **Darcy:** Merry Christmas, loser

 **Hottie, Esq:** Bah, humbug.

 **Darcy:** Charrrrrrming. What’re your plans for the day, Mr. Scrooge?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Billy’s crashing here so my guess is ‘happy family time’ with the Kaplan Krew. Aka, Bond marathon and all you can eat Chinese buffet.

 **Darcy:** Aside from the total lack of stuffing, that sounds almost awesome. Bro bonding?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Sort of. In the ten minutes a day he’s not texting Altman.

 **Darcy:** Aww. That’s pretty damn cute, you have to admit.

 **Hottie, Esq:** If you’re into grown men making idiots of themselves, yeah.

 **Darcy:** You mean you’re not going to be my lovey muffin baby?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Stop.

 **Darcy:** Sweetie schnookums!

 **Darcy:** Izzums my darling little cabbage?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Brb. Gonna go vomit.

 **Darcy:** And they say romance is dead.

 **Darcy:** You have plans for New Year’s yet?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Nothing special. Not Times Square.

 **Darcy:** Smart.Come to Tony and Pepper’s thing.

 **Hottie, Esq:** A work party?

 **Darcy** : Correction, *the* work party. I could use some arm candy. Also, they spring for a top-shelf open bar.

 **Hottie, Esq:** When you put it like that.

 **Hottie, Esq:** I’ll see if Billy’s got plans. I’ll let you know.

 **Darcy:** Cool. Gotta run; brunch thing. Laters!

\--

Tony Stark’s ridiculous penthouse overlooked Central Park, had come down to him from his super-rich industrialist father, and was rumored to contain at least three hot tubs. Why a triple-PhD physicist guy would need an apartment with two hot tubs was never the question that got asked.

There were worse things to do with your money if you were stupid-rich, though, than collect graduate degrees, teach, and live in the freaking Taj Mahal. The public rooms were seriously classy, all marble and granite and swaggy furniture. Darcy strongly suspected that at least one bedroom would look like something out of Moulin Rouge. Because Tony Stark, _that’s_ why. His New Year’s parties rocked like nothing else, with a DJ all set up in one corner of the room, champagne that was actually _from_ Champagne (and not just fizzy wine), and waiters in tuxedos circulating with trays full of little fried and toothpicked things on toast.

Virginia Potts, office manager for the NYCU history department and the kind of academic administrator that made deans weep, fit right in. She floated like a goddess through the crowd made up of the usual weird mix of professors, college administrators, industry people from the company that Tony still technically owned, and the handful of alumni donors that Tony loved to soak for more STEM funding.

Tommy had been right behind her, but was gone by the time she turned around. She thought she saw a flash of white-blond hair over by the bar, but the place was jamming enough that it was hard to be sure. It wasn’t like he was the kind of guy who would stick to her elbow all night, anyway. Seriously. It was fine.

“Darcy! Happy New Year!” She forgot to be annoyed at Tommy altogether when Jane came up, an extra glass of something fizzy in her hand. She handed it to Darcy with the kind of lazy grin that meant ‘Skyped with Norway all afternoon and I swear to God, Jane, don’t you dare give me any more details.’

“It’s not New Years yet, science lady,” Darcy grinned back, tugging at one of the fancy party curls that Jane had going on. “Give it another couple of hours. When did you get here?”

“About half an hour ago. Was that Tom Shepherd you just walked in with?” Jane scanned the room, frowning. She could see him now, bellied up to the bar and in what looked like deep conversation with his brother, Tommy gesturing in the air as he spoke and Billy’s head shaking no. “Are you two _dating_?” Jane sounded way more horrified than she really needed to. “Isn’t he always stalking Dr. Bishop?”

“That’s an old thing,” Darcy shrugged. She hadn’t asked and he hadn’t said, but unless Kate somehow got replaced by a total pod-person, she wasn’t about to start getting into Tommy now. Not when he’d been chasing her for four years and gotten precisely nowhere. “And we’re not dating.” That is, they’d started on ‘one date and we’ll see’ and never bothered to talk about it again. “It’s a booty thing,” she settled on, something that wouldn’t matter if it got around. Not that Jane would tell, but you didn’t say stuff out loud at a party without some idea that it would be all over campus by the next day.

Jane raised a Highly Skeptical Eyebrow. “A ‘booty thing’?”

Darcy tipped her head. “He has a very nice one, and I like to touch it.” The fizzy juice-punch stuff had a hell of a kick, and she breathed it out with a grin. “Woo; score one for Tony’s bartender.”

“Don’t even try to dissemble,” Jane poked Darcy in the forehead with one finger. “Is that really all it is?”

 “Yeah-hunh,” Darcy replied around the rim of her glass. Pineapple. There was definitely pineapple involved. And rum. “Why?”

“I don’t want to see you hurt, Darce. If he’s rebounding-”

“As if,” Darcy snorted. “He services me magnificently, and I don’t hate hanging out with him. That’s all there is to it.” And it was. She wasn’t exactly in the market for some clingy boyfriend who would whine when she wanted girl-time, and he wanted panty access. It was a good arrangement.

“Oh, come on,” Jane objected, disbelief written all over her face.

Time for some old-fashioned schooling. Jane knew about the list; had come across a copy of it taped into one of her notebooks ages ago and pestered her until she coughed up an explanation. She hadn’t made fun, not precisely, but the look in her eye now said she might be about to bring it up.

Darcy pre-empted her. “He does not fit the list, Jane,” she insisted. “Five -  no,” she counted on her fingers for a second. “Six points out of twenty does not a Mr. Right make. That’s a Fail on a class audit. Not up to code.”

Jane’s expression made the whole little rant worth everything. “Darcy! You can’t approach _dating_ like… buying a new dishwasher! People aren’t appliances with Energystar ratings and price match guarantees.”

“Please. Like you haven’t tried to figure out an algorithm for it at some point. I’ve seen your notebooks, Foster, with your little hearts and butts scribbled all over your long division.”

“Hearts and butt… _Darcy_. Phi and omega. They’re mathematical constants.”

“Hearts and butts, Jane.” She drank more of her pineapple-rum drink and the world was lovely.

Arms wrapped around her waist and a chin poked her in the shoulder. She caught a whiff of Tommy’s usual cologne and leaned back into him without thinking. “What was that about butts?” he asked. “Dr. Foster. Happy New Year.”

Darcy managed to crank her head around and kiss him on the cheek, leaving a smudge of red lipstick behind. “Yours. I want to squeeze it.”

Tommy didn’t miss a beat. “Just say the word. There’s a closet over there we could check out.”

“Good boy,” Darcy replied, totally impressed with his scouting and forward-thinking. It wasn’t like that would be the first time someone had snuck off to grope up in a closet at one of Tony’s parties. Maybe the first time Tony wasn’t directly involved.

“And on that note, I’m going to go see if there’s anything good at the buffet,” Jane announced, giving Darcy a Look that either meant ‘we’ll talk about this later,’ or ‘my thong is giving me a wedgie.’ “Tom.”

“Jane.”

And then they were alone again, as alone as one could get in a crowded room full of almost everybody Darcy saw on a daily basis. It was a good mix, too, Pepper chatting away animatedly with that Coulson guy from Facilities, Steve and Peggy pretending to slow-dance to the seriously retro tunes the DJ was spinning, Jess and Carol at the far end of the room chatting up Rhodes from the Physics Department. Cute, for an Old, and Carol definitely seemed to think so. They would make adorable babies.

“So tell me,” Tommy said, sliding around until he stood in front of her, his hand steady on her waist. “What’s a nice girl like you doing hanging around in a place like this?” he joked, the penthouse sprawling out behind him and the city skyline lit up through the huge windows.

“Waiting for someone.” Darcy grinned back over the rim of her glass.

“Oh yeah? Anyone I know?”

“Maybe. I’m told he has the worst pickup lines in the galaxy.”

Tommy snorted, and plucked her cocktail out of her hand. “Ouch.” He tucked the little umbrella into her hair, sticky end and all, before taking a drink. “So were you serious about the closet?”

She gave it serious thought. “Probably shouldn’t,” she finally admitted with real regret. “Considering Pepper writes my annual evaluations.” The song changed up to something she actually recognized, with a beat that a live human being under the age of thirty could dance to, and she tugged his hand. “Dance now,” she declared, “screw around later.” He followed without complaint, keeping one hand on her hip the entire time.

\--

“Darcy, have you seen Bill? It’s almost time for the countdown.”

“Hey, Pepper; and yeah. He’s over there making smooshy faces at his cell phone.”

“Who’s he calling?”

“Dr. Altman, I think. He’s back in Seattle for winter break.”

“Really? Are they-?”

“Not yet, at least not as far as I know. Tom says not, anyway. “

“It won’t be long, though. Not with the faces he’s making. That’s really sweet.”

“Dunno. Ted’s kind of cute-shy, in that ‘I’d rather yearn from a distance than ask him out’ kind of way. It might take them a while to get it together.”

“Bill’s blushing at his contact list; I don’t think he’ll hold out that much longer.”

“Twenty bucks says you’re wrong, boss lady. It’ll be Valentine’s. Two months is long enough for Bill to get over the last guy and Ted to pine hopelessly. It’ll be like a Harlequin around the halls for a while, then someone will kiss or accidentally confess, the tension will break, and all will be well again.”

“Mmm; I can’t see it like that. But you’re on. I’ll take my winnings in a spa gift certificate when it happens.”

\--

“There’s glitter in my mouth.” Darcy screwed up her face and pawed at her tongue in disgust. “Ew.”

“Blame Stark and his New Year’s rager,” Tommy suggested, sprawling out face-down across the rumpled and sweat-damp sheets, his naked butt tight, round and eminently smackable. “Ow!”  

“I blame you, since you’re the one with confetti everywhere.” She rolled up to sitting, stretching her arms above her head as everything popped, cracked, and slid back into place. The clock was blinking at her and she blinked back at it owlishly. 4:14 am. They hadn’t made it back to Tommy’s place until three, the party continuing long after the New Year’s countdown and the ball drop, and then they’d had just enough of a burst of energy to start the year off right.

‘With a bang.’ Hah. God, she was tired. And she still had to muster the energy to get cleaned up, get dressed, and get a cab back to her own place where she could officially die. Darcy wriggled her toes against the rough texture of the throw rug on Tommy’s bedroom floor, trying to work up the energy to move.

“Hey, Darce?” Tommy said, his voice muffled, his face turned away and half-buried in the pillow.

“Yeah?” Just put pressure on her feet, and she could boost herself up to standing-

“It’s late,” he said unnecessarily. “And cold. You could crash here.” He flipped so he was looking at her, and he shrugged, totally casually, like it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. “If you want. Or not. Whatever.”

For a second, there was something in his eyes that she thought she understood.

She stayed.

\--

_#7. Makes me laugh._

\--

For a guy who actually owned a car in NYC, Tommy’s apartment was a shithole. It had been easy enough not to notice the first couple of times; she’d only been there long enough for some mutual rocks-off-getting before bailing out. But now that she was staying post-date over more often than not, the barely functional thermostat, the vague and worrying noises from behind the walls and the loose electrical sockets added up to a picture that really didn’t fit.

If she didn’t know any better, she mused, scraping the scrambled eggs up off the old frying pan with the spatula she’d found in the back of a drawer, she’d assume that he’d stolen the car or something. Eggs, bacon, peppers and mushrooms from his fridge, and a sad old bottle of steak sauce. Yeah. Not bad.

“Three days, little brother.”

Forks and plate in hand, she padded back to the living room, Tommy’s voice careening towards total exasperation as he talked on the phone. He was sprawled out on his couch, his head hanging back over the arm at one end and his bare feet up along the back. His pajama pants had slipped down to expose his hipbone and the star tattoo there, and he rolled his eyes as Darcy approached. “It’s been three days, it was New Year’s, he’s visiting his family, and you’re not even dating. Get a grip.”

Ah; more drama. Darcy waved the bottle of steak sauce at Tommy until he nodded, then she doused the whole plate with it. Mmmm, good.

“Yeah, I’m really sure it’s not about you. Not everything is, you know.” Tommy grumped at his brother, the cell phone pressed to his ear. “No, you shut up. Stop moaning, go out and do something. Go to a movie. Come here and hang out for a while.” He flattened his legs when Darcy poked him with a fork, and she settled down on top of them, her butt between his knees. He bent them, just to mess with her, and she held the plate over his head and made like she was going to tip it. He waved her off, then scowled again. “Or- yeah. Call Kate. I’m plenty sympathetic, I’m just not telling you what you want to hear.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tommy hit a button and tossed his phone somewhere in the general direction of the old, scratched-up coffee table. It wobbled over its short leg when the phone landed, and he ignored it. “Is that breakfast?”

“Sort of,” Darcy stabbed some of the egg and veggie mess with a fork and fed him. He made a big show out of eyeballing the fork and only reluctantly allowing the gesture, but the glint in his eye when he actually tasted it said enough. “Question,” she said, gesturing with her fork, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Answer.”

“Hah.”

He slid one hand around her leg, his skin warm and smooth. He rubbed his thumb in gentle circles over her anklebone, his touch melting through all her muscles. _Must be a pressure point._

“I thought lawyers made serious bank. Why does your apartment suck so bad?” she asked bluntly.

“Not that much bank; I do it for the love of the game. And I have student loans,” Tommy answered easily, but he watched her with carefully blank eyes. “Though I don’t know if the extra few hundred a month would get me that much of an upgrade in this town.”  It was times like this that she wished she was a little bit better at reading people. Because his face said ‘totally cool, this is all good,’ but his muscles were all rigid and his shoulders were up and tighter than a bungee cord on an elephant. “If you want ‘bank,’ you’re barking up the wrong sugar daddy.”

“Please,” she snorted. “That’s good news, seriously. I won’t have to keep up with a champagne lifestyle on my ramen-level budget. So then I gotta know; what’s the deal with super-car?” Something in him deflated, like he’d been waiting to get a booster shot at the doctor’s and been told he didn’t need it. Life came back into his eyes and his cocky-ass grin touched them and made them shine, green, bright, and too, too wild. He sat up and stabbed at breakfast, managing to drip steak sauce on his naked chest. Swiping at it with the pad of her thumb led to a fork-war, and she threw up her hands in surrender only when he got the tines way too close to her nose.

“Appearances,” Tommy admitted, once he’d bounced up to sit properly, pulling Darcy into his lap. “The criminal and civil guys, you want to be sure they’re not on the take. They can get away with the off-the-rack suits and the train. But no-one trusts a corporate guy in a banged-together Subaru with 200,000 miles on it.” He reached around her to steal her fork and eat over her shoulder. “Gotta roll like a partner if I want to make partner. Which I do.”

“Seriously?” Darcy craned her neck to look back at him, his hair sticking up in all directions and his lips all pouty. “That’s so mercenary. I’m kind of disappointed in you.”

He just kind of hung out there for a minute, which gave her enough time to eat all the mushrooms, and it seemed like something heavy was going to come out of his mouth. But shallow was as shallow did, and instead he grabbed her around the waist and waggled his stupid white-blond eyebrows suggestively. “It’s got amazing front seat space for a sportscar,” he grinned. “Come for a drive with me and I’ll show you just how useful a ride like that can be.”

“Making out in the bucket seats of a beemer?” She pretended to think it over, tapping her lip with her fork while he laughed at her.  “I could be convinced.”

The faint hissing sound from the kitchen that she’d been assuming was his radiators got really loud, really quickly, and Tommy bolted for the door, dumping Darcy back on her butt on the couch. Clanking, cursing and the sounds of water boiling over filtered back to her, along with the dark, rumbly smell of really strong coffee. He emerged a few minutes later with a resigned look and two full mugs, pushing one into her hands.

She was going to regret asking, but like so many things in her life, she did it anyway. “So I get the whole apartment deal now; rent is brutal. I think Wendy’s still living with her mom. But you keep the shitty-ass coffee maker because?”  

Tommy crossed his legs over on his end of the couch and wrapped his hands around his mug like it meant something. It was a funny sort of vulnerable look, for a guy who talked like he had nothing to prove. “It makes good coffee,” he said, and it was totally a lie. The cup he’d given her was average; not terribad, but nothing like the ambrosia that Jane had perfected making with beakers and a Bunsen burner in one corner of her lab. Now _that_ was coffee worth a fire hazard for. “What is this, twenty-questions time?” He asked, looking like the guy she used to see in the hallways at work, not the one who liked to spend fifteen minutes at a go with his face in her crotch.

It wasn’t a great change. She liked the second version better.

“Could be,” she shrugged it off and had more coffee. “You don’t have to answer if it’s, like, a state secret. Given that we’re doing the do on a semi-regular basis, it seemed like a thing to ask.”

“About my coffee maker?”

“So it _is_ a state secret? Does it communicate with the mothership and transmit invasion reports?” she waggled her fingers at him.

“Yeah; and I’m such a crap alien that they abandoned me here with a broken one.” He riffed off of her, and soon they were both laughing again. Better. “It was a gift from the Kaplans,” he explained after a bit, his legs uncrossed and toes poking at her bare thigh. “When I went to college.”

“The Kaplans, like, Bill’s parents?”

“Yeah.” And then he went quiet again. She forgot half the time that the guys were twins. They barely even looked alike to her now, unless you took them feature by feature. Where Bill was excitable, Tommy was closed down. Not quiet, though. Just… surface access only, when Bill wore his heart smeared all over his sleeve. “Billy and I found each other the year before, right? And they were cool about it. Cooler than you’d expect, for people who just found out that they sort of had another teenage in-law wandering around. They helped me set up my dorm room and stuff.”

“What about your folks?” He never talked about that, or about them. Most of the time it seemed like Bill was the only family he had in the world.

 He shrugged, and curled his toes against her leg. “They gave me a roof over my head for eighteen years; what more could I want?” And that… that was _sad_ in a way that he didn’t seem to notice, all matter-of-fact and cool. “Mary reminded me I was on my own for rent and tuition. Frank gave me three boxes of condoms and said ‘make me proud.’“

“Oh my God. That explains so much.”

“I know. It’s amazing that I turned into the well-adjusted individual that I am.” He’d wormed his manky feet into her actual lap by the time she looked down. She tickled the bottom of one with the tips of her fingers, to see if she could make him jump.

Protip: bad idea when holding coffee.

“What about you?” he asked later, when they were getting dressed and she was rummaging through his drawer for a coffee-free t-shirt that didn’t scream ‘walk of shame.’ “You’re not a native New Yorker.”

“What gave it away, Jersey Boy?” Darcy drawled, letting go of the control she usually kept over the flat northern accent that had made her life such hell the first couple of years after she’d moved. “It’s the voice, right? Or is it that I still say ‘sorry’ when I bump into someone?”

“Your love of weird-ass casseroles stamps ‘Minnesota’ on your forehead,” Tommy replied, digging in a basket of clean laundry. He handed her an NYU shirt and she rolled it into a rat-tail to whip at his butt. “Oh yep.” He jumped and yelped. “You betcha!”

“One Fargo joke, _jerky_ boy, and I’ll find a wood chipper to put _you_ through,” she threatened, snapping the makeshift whip at him again. He got out of the way behind the bed, pulling his jeans on as he went. “But yeah. Saint Paul, Minnesota; home to absolutely nothing interesting. Except my family, who are pretty cool.”

“Must have used it all up in your parents’ generation, then.” It only took a second to go up and over the bed and get within snapping range again. He took off, laughing, down the hallway of his apartment. She chased him, skidding to a halt when banging from the floor meant his cranky downstairs neighbor registering her displeasure with a broom handle. Tommy stuck his finger to his lips and tiptoed exaggeratedly into the living room, and Darcy laughed until she had to sit down, the tears running down her face.  

She kept laughing even when the banging from below started up again, which only managed to make everything funnier.

Best. Sunday morning. Ever.


	2. Chapter 2

**WendyK:** We’re on fire?

 **Darcy:** News got it wrong. It’s the Annex next door, not us

 **WendyK:** oh thank god. Carol’s office is a paper death trap right now.

 **Darcy:** I thought your job was to un-death-trap her?

 **WendyK:** there are some tasks too Herculean for one woman alone.

 **Darcy:** When are you coming back in?

 **WendyK:** I’m still on my deathbed.

 **WendyK:** Martian bird flu meets the BLACK PLAGUE

 **WendyK:** These are my last words, mark them well

 **Darcy:** Whatevs, drama queen. You’re not the one who came in today to find the roof on fire.

 **WendyK:** Probably tomorrow. Our roof wasn’t on fire tho?

 **Darcy:** Any roof on fire is not the way to begin the day

 **Darcy** : But I have goss

 **WendyK:** Spill

 **Darcy** : Kaplan and Altman are totally banging. Obvious walk of shame this morning was obvious.

 **WendyK:** Sweet. Sylvie will be heartbroken

 **WendyK:** She had money on ‘pining forever because boys are dumb.’

 **Darcy:** The second part’s not wrong

 **Darcy:** Did I leave my iPod at your place?

 **WendyK:** Not that I saw, why?

 **Darcy:** Can’t find it. Fuck.

 **Darcy:** Oops. Gotta go.

 **WendyK:** Maybe Jane saw it? Good luck!

\--

Turning out her desk got Darcy an inventory of stuff she’d thought she’d lost – a wicked-cool fountain pen with pink ink, her ‘Ask Me!’ badge from orientation week, three strings of beads from the student union’s Mardi Gras party three years ago, and a cello-wrapped Twinkie. But no iPod. The emergency rations went back in the drawer, and she sat back in her chair with a frown. Where had she left it? Gym bag? Not likely. She’d plugged it in at home to move on some new podcasts, and then… and then… what?

“Lewis! You standing me up?” Tommy leaned against the doorframe to the history office, flipping his sunglasses around in his fingers, and it was just like that first time. Except this time he’d come out of Teddy’s office instead of Bill’s, and he was distracted – and not by her.

“Depends,” Darcy said out of pure snarky reflex, and looked at her clock. 12:09, she was supposed to have met him ten minutes ago. Damn. “You planning to take me somewhere good, or not?” She shoved the drawer closed and grabbed her coat. “Because if this is an Arby’s run, I can go eat in the caf.”

“I was thinking noodles, but if you’d rather have meat from a can, I can leave you to it.”

“Nah; noodles is good,” Darcy nodded, slinging her arm through his and wandering out toward the street that ran behind the building. “I didn’t leave my iPod in your car, by any chance?” she asked, purely on impulse, and Tommy paused.

“No,” he answered cheerfully, looking around to get his bearings before pulling her off toward the intersection and the crosswalk lights. “Haven’t seen it.”

But he didn’t meet her eyes when he answered, and changed the subject quickly.

\--

“So here’s what I don’t get,” Tommy said, halfway through his udon. “You’ve got a Masters, right?”

Darcy’s noodles were fighting back, and she took her chopsticks to them to scissor them back down to size. “Yeah. PoliSci; I finished a couple of years ago. I did a thing on the politics of science education and international corporate funding.” A ‘thing’ that had taken way too long and netted her a whole lot of nothing in terms of employment prospects, mind you. But it was a thing that she was proud of, even as it sat on her bookshelf gathering dustballs. “Why? Are you thinking about going back?”

“Me? No. I’ve served my time. Law school was bad enough. But that’s the thing. You’re smart as hell and you have the paperwork to prove it. Why are you working as a secretary?”

“Office administrator,” Darcy corrected him really damn quickly, her hackles rising. “Secretary” is the word you use for someone in a typing pool; Pepper and I run the department, thank you very much.”

“Administrator,” he corrected himself, waving his hand. “Sure. The point is, you could be doing so much more with what you already have. Why settle for a gig as a clerk? You could do amazingly well at an internship with an NGO or on a campaign, say, either here or even in DC.”

Unbelievable. First thing, why did he care what she did, as long as she was paying her bills? “Yeah. Because it’s just that easy. ‘Get an internship’ and live on what?” Darcy scoffed. “There’s no such thing as a paid first gig, or even a second one, and I kind of enjoy not starving. Not to mention? I _like_ my job.”

“There are workarounds,” Tommy said, his mind chewing at something around the corners. “But you should-”

“Don’t push it, Shepherd.” She warned him off, her voice as cool as she could make it and her glare as fierce. He didn’t seem too quelled by either, but at least he shut up. “Eat your noodles.”

\--

_#2. Romantic._

_#5. Likes sports but doesn’t_ like _like sports._

_#8. Altruistic. Gives back to society._

\--

He dropped it, which was a good thing, because it would have sucked to break up with a dude right before Valentine’s. If they _were_ in a relationship, which was still, weirdly, sort of nebulous. Which was probably good, in that if someone else asked her out she wouldn’t have to shut the other option down right away. But also bad, in that if Tommy thought they _were_ dating exclusively, and she went out with another guy, she’d definitely be the one in the wrong.

Not that it was all that likely to be an issue. She didn’t get spontaneously asked out all that often, and hadn’t gone out on the prowl herself in… yeah. Just over two months. Hunh. But on the other hand, they still didn’t have Valentine’s plans.

She’d told Teddy that she and Tommy were dating, which was technically true. They went on dates, ergo, dating. They banged regularly, and she stayed over at Tommy’s place more often than not.

That didn’t make him her boyfriend, necessarily.

He still didn’t fit the list.

\--

“Can you break up with someone you might not technically be ‘dating’?”

Teddy stopped sorting his mail and his head jerked up, his eyes wide like deer caught in headlights. “What did Tom do?” he asked, and goddammit. She did not need to see the hickeys on his neck showing under his unbuttoned collar. Because that led to thinking about him and Bill, and Bill looked enough like Tommy to be ever so slightly confusing, and thinking about foursomes with incest overtones was really not the best way to start her week. Some crushes were born never to die, but to putter along as friendships with static electricity on the side. At least in one direction. Stupid Teddy Altman and his stupid cute face. If there was a God, He’d have made sure Teddy was just a little bit bi-curious.

 “Nothing,” Darcy admitted, sitting her elbows on her desk and her chin in her hands. “But boys are idiots in general, so it’s better to be prepared.”

Teddy threw out a handful of brightly-colored flyers in the recycling bin and laughed softly. “No argument there.” He perched on the edge of her desk and poked Darcy gently in the shoulder. She rocked backwards, playing along with his easy prod, and sprawled in her chair. He was a big old doof, full of sunshine and puppies, and there was no way to stay irritated with the world when he was smiling at her like she was his favorite little sister. “Don’t overthink things, Darcy,” he offered as advice, and she came this close to kicking him. “If it’s good, just enjoy it for what it is.”

“You are such a hypocrite.” As if she hadn’t noticed the long pining looks and the total bitten-tongue dramaz that had been swirling around Teddy and Bill all fall? He’d even gotten into some major fight with Bill’s now-ex boyfriend over Hallowe’en (and she’d never quite stopped feeling guilty for feeding him the bad information in August. In her defense, how was she to know that Bill and Nate had _actually_ broken up that time, as opposed to the half-dozen other times when they were almost-dumped-but-not-quite or in that nebulous disaster zone between ‘just bickering’ and ‘nuclear winter’?

It wasn’t like she kept _track_ of that stuff.)

It had all worked out in the end anyway, so no big. Bill and Teddy could suck on each other’s necks all night and live happily ever after, and it wasn’t like her mistake had done more than add a six-month moratorium or so to the inevitable endgame.

Teddy shrugged sheepishly. “I’m also right,” he offered, and she forgave him. But only because of the puppy-dog eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, and stood up to fix his collar. Tugging it got it high enough to cover the hickeys, and buttoning the top button looked a bit dumb without a tie, but it was better than showing off his makeouts to the undergrads. “You couldn’t have waited until next week, could you?”

She still had to buy Pepper that stupid gift certificate.

“What?” Teddy asked, all innocence and confusion, then his hand flew up to cover his neck and he blushed a deep red. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“It better be,” Darcy said, stepping back to look at her handiwork. “Or I’m going to think you have a really rude interest in vacuum cleaners. There. Now you’re presentable again.”

Teddy rubbed the back of his neck, the flush of embarrassment there beginning to fade. “What would we do without you, Darcy?”

“You’d be lost souls, wandering through the corridors, laces untied and syllabi uncopied, scratching hopelessly at the doors trying to find the class you were supposed to be teaching three semesters ago,” she answered glibly, and meant every word.

**\--**

**Darcy:** Any plans for the big V?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Thought both of us took care of that years ago. Something you need to tell me?

 **Darcy:** hah, you funny. Fuuuuuunny.

 **Darcy:** Valentine’s Day. Are we doing a thing?

 **Hottie, Esq:** You get a better offer?

 **Darcy:** You’ll never know. There’s a tapas joint I want to check out. You in?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Sure. But no getting all weird on me just because of a day.

 **Darcy:** Define ‘weird’.

 **Hottie, Esq:** No slams on Facebook if I don’t show with a dozen red roses and a mariachi band playing ‘Unchained Melody.’

 **Darcy:** … speaking of ‘weird’.

 **Hottie, Esq:** I’m not.

…

 **Hottie, Esq:** I don’t go for all that hearts-and-flowers romcom stuff.

 **Darcy:** yeah. Getting that.

 **Hottie, Esq:** So just… don’t expect too much.

 **Darcy:** I bet you say that to all the girls.

 **Hottie, Esq:** Nah; just the one I want to keep around.

 **Darcy:** Aww; that was almost sentimental of you.

…

 **Darcy:** Tom?

…

 

And then Pepper was coming back into the office, with Carol in tow. Darcy shoved her phone into her desk drawer and popped open the timetable drafts from the registrar, lines of text marching across her screen in a fashion as orderly as her life was currently not.

\--

Valentine’s Day fell on a Thursday, which sucked, because she’d still have to crawl into work the next day and be semi-coherent, which meant responsible-adult bedtimes. Mostly. And it was a good thing she was prepped for that, because Tommy’s text came through right after she’d settled in at her desk in the morning. First thing she’d heard from him in a couple of days, naturally, and it was a blow-off.

 **Hottie, Esq:** Need to cancel tonight; work thing is going to drag on .

 **Darcy:** Bailing on V-Day? Weaksauce. You will never know what underwear I was planning on wearing.

 **Hottie, Esq:** I’m good with commando too.

 **Darcy:** Good luck with that.

 **Darcy:** You’re stuck at work all night?

 **Hottie, Esq:** Probably. There’s a board meeting tomorrow to prep for. We’re going to litigation soon.

 **Darcy:** Yeah; I’m getting it.

 **Dumbass** : You busy at lunch? I can escape for a few.

 **Darcy:** No plans. Come on by.

She needed to revise her list. Boys were _all_ idiots.

On the plus side, it meant not having to have some kind of stupid conversation about ‘where are we going,’ because the answer was obvious enough. Sort-of dating, good sex, no mushy stuff, and no promises.

That was fine. She could live with that. She was _happy_ with that.

She still wasn’t changing his name back in her contact list.

 **Darcy:** So I’m dateless tonight. What’re you doing?

 **WendyK:** V-day girls night at Jane’s place. 8 pm, bring wine.

 **Darcy:** Here for this.

\--

  1. _Shows up on time. Or at least calls if things change._



\--

Pepper took lunch at twelve, which meant Darcy had to wait until one, but Tommy showed up at 12:45 with a messenger bag strapped across his chest and a totally fake cocky grin.  

“I can’t go yet,” Darcy apologized before he said anything. “Pepper’s not back.”

“I can’t stay,” he answered, and didn’t even have the good graces to look embarrassed. “I’m supposedly on my way right back to the office after dropping off some contracts, took a detour.”

And, okay. That was sweet in the Tom Shepherd universe of ‘sweet,’ which was to say ‘weirdly considerate while simultaneously infuriating.’ She was going to miss it when their _whatever_ was over, and that sucked. The whole point of a ‘Mr. Right Now’ was not getting attached.

Darcy sat her elbows on her desk and her chin in her hands and fluttered her eyelashes to hide the big thinky thoughts she wasn’t supposed to be having. “You’re risking your livelihood for little old me?”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Tom shrugged it off, but he was bouncing on his toes and one all-over ball of nervous energy. “Just a sorry about tonight, that’s all.”  He leaned over her desk to kiss her, one hand cupping her jaw. His lips moved over hers with easy familiarity, hot and firm, with a hint of tongue, tasting of sweat and fast-food grease. There weren’t any students around so she kissed him back, grabbing his jacket lapel and hanging on for dear life.

He broke away and the air was cool on her lips where he had been. “Here,” he said, and dropped two boxes on her desk, one a lot smaller than the other, and both wrapped with perfect corners in neon sparkly pink paper. “Gotta go.” He backpedalled out of the office and vanished down the hall before she could do more than say goodbye, and frown at his retreating back.

What the ever-loving hell was that? Holy mixed signals, Batman.

On the other hand, presents! Bigger box first, because bigger box first. Duh.

The tape lifted easily under her nails (red with white hearts today, no other explanation needed), and the paper slid off the box of chocolates. Mixed centers, not super-fancy, but a step up from brown drugstore wax. Five points to Gryffindor.

The smaller package looked and felt very familiar, somehow, just about the same size and weight as her-

“Fuck you, Shepherd,” Darcy exclaimed, ripping the paper off of her missing and well-lamented iPod. She had been forced to fake-read books all the way home and back on the train, and hang her earbuds off of the inside pocket of her jacket to maintain her ‘busy; keep away’ signs. “What the fuck?” Death was too good for him.

He’d charged it, somehow, and it turned on when she touched the screen. There wasn’t anything new on the outside; no soppy engraving that meant she could make him replace the damn thing, or even a new case on the scratched and battered back. So what the hell? Even her pictures were all still there.

The playlists, though; that screen had changed. There was a new one there, named ‘The V-Card,’ which was easily one of the dumbest and most obscure conversation-pun-related jokes she’d ever heard. She smiled, realized what she was doing, and bit the inside of her cheek to remind herself not to. It was probably just a bunch of techno anyway.

Except it wasn’t.

Simon and Garfunkel, Jim Croce- the track list read like the set list for a concert she’d kill to get tickets for. A couple of songs she had, most that she didn’t. He had to have planned it before he stole her iPod, looked at her iTunes, figured out what was missing, bought the tracks specially-

He didn’t even _like_ her music.

But still! Her stuff! He’d been into her things without asking, must have looked at her laptop, and oh God, what _else_ had he opened? Had iTunes even been the top screen when he’d done it? What if he’d gone through her email while she was in the shower, or asleep, or whenever?

Not that she had anything to hide (no more so than the average twenty-something with a couple of screen names), but that wasn’t the point. Because the whole thing was sweet, for a _boyfriend_ who had _computer privileges_ , but creepy as hell for a regular lay.

She stared at the iPod, but the evidence didn’t move. Fine. Whatever. She grabbed her earbuds and jammed them in, hit shuffle to see what would happen.

_I’m not sayin’ that I love you_

_I’m not sayin’ that I’ll care if you love me_

_I’m not sayin’ that I’ll care_

_I’m not sayin’ I’ll be there when you need me_

…

It was a damn good song. She was humming along before she knew what she was doing. But was he the type to choose songs for their meaning, or just because they were the right genre, or did he just roll dice and look at a chart?

He said he wanted to keep her around, and then he cut and run.

_I don’t understand you at all, Tommy Shepherd._

\--

 

Pad thai and red wine solved a lot of life’s problems. Girl time on Jane’s ratty couch with the broken spring also helped, the familiar total disarray of her apartment more comforting than being alone at home on Valentine’s. She curled her legs up under her and dragged more than half of the brightly colored afghan over her knees. Wendy grabbed the other end as it slid off her and it turned into a tug of war, which Darcy won. “Suck it, Kawasaki.”

“I let you win, Lewis. You need it more than I do.” Wendy rolled her wrist, the wine shimmering in her glass, her fingers barely visible beneath the thick cuff of her heavy cable-knit sweater. Jane propped her feet up on the end of the couch and finished winding her hair up into a messy bun, her takeout box balanced in her lap.

“I still don’t get why you’re mad,” Jane refused to let them change the subject, fixating as usual.

“It’s mixed signals all over the place.” Darcy stabbed her chopsticks savagely into her noodles. “He’s into me, but not enough to plan Valentine’s, and then he agrees to go out, warns me that he’s not into _it_ , then cancels. He stole my iPod!”

“- and?”

“And he messed with it!”

Wendy cocked her head, her little smirk meaning that she thought she had one over on Darcy, always three flippin’ steps ahead. “Is the music any good?”

Fuck. “Yeah.”

“So what you’re saying,” Jane said, and ooooh, she was being just as smug as Wendy. Darcy was going to have to double-down on the teasing re: Thor Odinson and Jane’s magical Skype adventures. “Is that your regular booty call paid enough attention to figure out what you like, spent hours finding stuff in genres he doesn’t even listen to, and then went out of his way to make it a nice surprise? Yeah, wow. He sounds like a real _jerk_.”

“What a god-damn _crime,_ ” Wendy added dryly.

Darcy snarled. “Don’t you get snotty with me, Foster.”

“He made you a mix tape, Darcy. It’s sweet, in a high school kind of way.” Wendy said.

“I’d have been happier if it hadn’t come with a side of larceny.” But they weren’t entirely wrong. “And he’s getting twitchy and weird, which is harshing what’s been a really good thing so far.” More wine, because wine solved a lot of problems. At least temporarily. “So here’s the thing. Do I call him on it, or ignore that he’s being a freak and hope that it passes?”

“Ignore it.” Wendy replied immediately. “He’ll either relax, or it’ll drive him as nuts as he’s making you. Either way, you win.”

“There’s a reason you’re still single, you know.”

Wendy stole the afghan back, Jane’s lack of reliable heating sending a cold breeze across Darcy’s lap. “Because I have seen perfection. I’m just waiting for her to realize it.”

“Who is it this time?” Jane asked, licking a smear of soy sauce off the side of her thumb.

“Kamala Khan,” Wendy sighed. “New PhD student in Sociology. I’ve been spending a lot of time in their common room, hiding from Jan,” she explained, digging through the box of chicken and picking out the cashews. “Kam’s pretty much perfect, except for the enduring mystery of which team she plays for.”   

There wasn’t nearly enough wine left in the bottle, but Darcy _was_ going to have to crawl into work tomorrow and pretend to be non-hung over. Maybe it was for the best. “Wait,” she asked belatedly. “Why are you hiding from Dr. Van Dyne?”

Wendy’s face screwed into a moue of distaste. “She’s planning an intervention.”

Jane’s bewilderment showed. “On who?”

“Me. Hence, hiding. She said something yesterday about ‘life-changing shoes.’“

Jane, queen of all flannel, looked at them both like Wendy had started speaking in Swahili. “Shoes come in ‘life-changing’?”

“Apparently,” Wendy shrugged gamely. “I’m trying not to be in a position to find out.” 

Darcy snickered. “I wonder what that costs as a feature?”

“Three hundred bucks, and the tattered remnants of my dignity.”

\--

Ignoring whatever had sent Tommy spazzing into the next century turned out to be the right choice, because he called her a few days later all cool and breezy and as if nothing had happened.

Nothing except the approximately 104 times through she’d listened to the playlist he’d made. And the one night she’d weirded herself the hell out when she’d found a t-shirt of his balled up under her bed, and actually wore it to sleep. It was a comfortable shirt, and big enough on her to work as a nightshirt, and that was the _only_ reason. Shoving it into the bottom of her laundry hamper the next morning had been because it was only polite to wash it before returning it, not at all because she felt like a massive moron waking up sniffing it to see if she could still smell his aftershave.

She wasn’t the sentimental type.

And then he called, and they joked about stupid things people did at work. She told him the story about Jess’ breakup with Barton from Facilities and how Tony had tried to give her a ‘Congratulations’ certificate, until Pepper made him apologize. Tommy had a long shaggy dog story that ended with a dumb pun and she couldn’t be sure how much of it was real and how much was just setup for the punchline, and so things were totally, completely back to normal.

Meeting him after work at his office instead of waiting for him to come by campus might have been a mistake, though. It wasn’t the high rise with the etched glass doors, or the impressive list of partner names on the entry to the corporate law firm that made it weird, necessarily, but Darcy-the-academic-hipster definitely stood out. There was no way she would ever change her own rockin’ style, but the two just didn’t go together in the right kind of way.

The receptionist stared at her over her tiny little old lady glasses, watching her every move with beady little eyes; like Darcy was going to break something in the all-glass all-steel nightmare of an office. Her first impulse was to fold and obey, perch timidly on the edge of one of the super-uncomfortable chairs and wait like a good little girl for Tom to come get her.

 _Damn. She’s_ good _._

But that would be giving _in_. Darcy slid back in the chair, spread her arms out across the back of the adjacent ones in both directions, and wiggled her fingers gleefully at the desk-beast when that schoolmarm glare came her way again. “Hiya,” she said cheerfully. The grey-haired ice-queen gave her a tight-lipped smile back.

She could totally ask for tips. The Look of Death would be really handy to deploy when a certain someone was getting up her butt about credit card reconciliation deadlines. “So how do you-” she started to ask, but Tommy appeared in the door just as she did. “Hey, baby.” Darcy switched gears instead, taking a while to uncross her legs and get to her feet.

“Hey yourself,” Tommy said, and kissed her hello. She could totally hear desk-beast’s hackles rising from across the room. Awesomesauce.

Tommy, now, he fit in here, especially all duded up in the fancy grey suit she was itching to peel off him. It should have been pretentious but on him it just worked, and he slid into place in the chrome and white of the fancy reception area like he belonged there. Darcy was more like the cracking paint and flickering lights of her office at the college. A little warped, not to everyone’s taste, but comfortable with what it was. It was homey in a way that the sleek modernist lines of Tommy’s office totally weren’t.

“Are you leaving for the night, Mr. Shepherd?” desk-beast asked, glancing pointedly at the clock, and the number that still started with five.

“Yeah,” he said, taking some kind of card from her hand and signing something to it, and “I am. I’m good for billables this week, so don’t worry about me.” He dropped the pen with a flourish and she frowned at him.

“It’s good that you came by,” Tommy said, squeezing Darcy’s hand. “There’s someone here I want you to meet. Her husband’s one of the partners, but she’s making a run for office in the next by-election, and she’s putting a team together-”

“Shepherd!” Another Dude In Suit, this one older than Tommy, balding and bulky, strode into reception with a stack of folders in hand. “Good, you’re still here. Where are you on the Hudson briefs?” The air got thick in the small space, all filled up by the bigness of the guy’s personality. Tommy didn’t seem to notice, his hands resting casually in his pockets.

“They’re already with Lorna for cross-referencing; she’ll have them back to me by the morning.”

Baldy nodded officiously. “See that she does. I need them on my desk by two tomorrow.”

“It won’t be a problem.” Tommy’s hackles were up, a tic in the corner of his jaw jumping, but everything else about his posture oozed easy confidence.

Baldy relaxed, and only seemed to notice her then. “And who have we here?” he asked, and that was only a little bit patronizing, because really? Seriously? “Did you hire a new PA?”

“This is my…” Tommy began, but then he trailed off. He looked at her, his brow furrowing, and then seemed to shrug it off. “This is Darcy Lewis,” he offered instead, and Darcy felt something loose inside her tangle up into a ball. “Darce, Obadiah Stane, one of the senior partners.”

“Hey,” Darcy smiled, waggling her fingers. Stane didn’t hold out his hand or offer to shake on it.

“And what does a Darcy do?” he asked instead, his voice the kind of fake jolly that you got from an uncle you saw at a reunion every five years.

Tommy got there first. “Darcy manages a department at NYCU.”

And yeah, maybe that was technically correct, but also a whole lot of not. “Office administrator,” Darcy corrected, putting on her biggest ‘fuck you too, Uncle Albert’ smile as she did it.

Stane’s smile dimmed. “Isn’t that nice.” It would be really bad form to taze Tommy’s boss, even if he was totally asking for it. “Tom, don’t forget the Hudson briefs. Two’o’clock.”

“It’s under control.” Tommy grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the office, jamming for the elevator like he couldn’t get them out of there fast enough.

“Worried I’m gonna say something embarrassing?” Darcy asked, folding her arms across her front to hold in everything. _Just keep reminding yourself; boys are dumb._

“What?” Tommy asked, his face a total mask of confusion. “In front of Stane? Whatever,” he said dismissively. “I just want to get the hell out of here. I get more done in six hours than most of these guys do in three days; face-time overtime is a stupid expectation. They can suck it.”

“There’s the responsible adult that we all know and adore,” Darcy joked, forcing her shoulders down. It wasn’t about her. Seriously. Not everything had to be. “Come on, Shepherd.” She tucked her arm through his as they exited the elevator. “We have a town to hit, chaos to sow, and I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

Tommy grinned wide, the first real smile she’d seen on him that day, his eyes lighting up green and wild. “Then let’s go make some noise.”

\--

So all that was going pretty well, office issues aside. And then March happened.

The first Darcy caught wind of the whole ‘Dr. Altman situation’ was when Pepper called a meeting of the admin staff early Monday morning. They clustered into the lounge before anyone else was around, blinking bleary-eyed at each other over cups of coffee, and she laid it down nice and easy. “Doctor Altman’s been accused of inappropriate behavior with a student,” Pepper said, and Wendy totally came within a second of choking on her coffee. Darcy patted her on the back as she coughed, trying to process the news. “Department policy is not to discuss any of these sorts of matters, especially with students, _especially_ when legal and the student advocates have only just begun to investigate. Are we clear?”

Darcy nodded slowly. “Who is he, just so we know?”

Pepper made a funny face that Darcy couldn’t interpret, but she shook her head. “It’s a she; Angel Salvadore, she’s a second year student. And that’s not to go any further than this room, either. Until legal make their determination, none of us know anything about anything.”

Angel – Darcy knew that name. She was a ghost in the department, forever flitting around with posters and notices. She’d come in to the office at one point in the fall asking about scholarship options for next year, seemed pretty disappointed when her grades didn’t qualify her for any of the big ones. Cute, too, though there was no _way_ she was Teddy’s type. That had been very firmly established, so far as she could tell, as Bill Kaplan. Accept no substitutes.

(Mike from Security had been a little too forthcoming at the pub night the other night, talking about what he’d almost walked in on back in January. How often did they clean that couch, anyway?)

“Geez,” Wendy muttered, after the meeting was over. “You think you know somebody.”

“He didn’t do it,” Darcy said immediately.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. He’s not that kind of guy. Teddy’s one of the good ones.”

Wendy frowned, not as happy with Darcy’s totally unbiased assessment to the situation as she should have been. “But false accusations are just as rare,” she pointed out. “So on the one hand, for Dr. Altman’s sake, I really, really hope you’re right. On the other? I don’t want this to be fake, because that will fuck everyone else up, for a long time.”

She left, saying something about Carol’s schedule turning into a ‘goddamn nightmare zone,’ and Darcy was left alone, with just her cup of coffee, and a hate-on for the universe at large that didn’t seem likely to go away.

\--

 Lunch at the faculty club that Friday with the usual gang was so much more suck than usual. Darcy sat in the long wooden booth, Tommy’s arm stretched out behind her, while conversation swirled around them.

“What am I supposed to do?” Teddy had his face in his hands, his elbows on the table and his lunch barely picked-at. Bill rubbed his back slowly, and his jaw set in a determined look that thankfully wasn’t directed at her. For a moment, nerdy old Dr. Kaplan looked like Tommy, fire in his eyes and his mind made up to do something impulsive and drastic.

 _Firebomb the place_ , Darcy wanted to say, but that was hardly sympathetic or useful.

 “Wait it out, I suppose,” Cassie Lang said, her relentless optimism the kind of thing that alternately inspired Darcy and drove her a bit nuts. “I mean, you have all her work on record, right? So the truth will come out one way or another.”

“It’s that final exam that’s going to screw him,” Kate stabbed the air with her fork. “There’s no way to prove that Teddy didn’t junk her paper in retaliation.”

“She wasn’t there,” Teddy sank forward until his forehead rested on the table. “She never turned in a final. And there was nothing to retaliate for!”

Eli exchanged looks with Tom and Kate over Teddy’s head. Kate shook her head at him, drawing her hand across her throat. “Since she wasn’t there, then that’ll be reflected on the proctor’s forms,” Eli said reassuringly, instead of whatever else he’d been thinking. “Legal called me this morning, I’m guessing to set up a meeting time to find out what I remember.”

Kate nodded, adding her two cents in. “They’ll check that list against the grade list; if she didn’t sign in, that’ll be the end of it. No exam written means no exam paper for you to throw away, and the rest of her story doesn’t make any sense without that.”

It all made sense, based on usual procedures, which meant there was something more to it than that. It wasn’t like any of the security measures around campus were in any way secret. Students turned in their ID cards for exams, got the numbers and photos checked, it all went on file- just like grades and student complaints. So why would someone say something if she knew it could be proven wrong so easily?

It meant that either she didn’t think something small would escalate this far or, worse than that, she had some way of fixing the evidence in her favor.




“Unless she convinces them that he paid off the proctor,” Tommy said, practically reading her mind. Thinking it was one thing, though; saying it, while Teddy was obviously freaking himself out in a major way? Not the smartest of all moves. She nudged him under the table and Tommy nudged her back, folding his arms across his chest so she couldn’t poke him. “Are you going to eat that?” Tommy asked, changing the subject with an attempt to steal Teddy’s fries.

“Tommy!” Billy snapped, but Teddy just pushed his plate toward Tommy with his elbow. He didn’t even crack a smile.

Tommy moved his arm to reach out for the plate and that gave her a chance, poking him in the ribs where he was ticklish. “You’re just a beacon of positive energy, aren’t you?” she said, and he squirmed aside to avoid her finger.

Tommy pulled Teddy’s plate closer to himself and stabbed a fry with his fork. “Call me a realist.”

Cassie elbowed Jonas and he put away his phone, looping one arm over her shoulder and the back cushion of the booth. “But since Teddy’s telling the truth, he won’t have anything to worry about.” She smiled at Teddy, and Kate ruffled his hair.

Tom shook his head. “That’s sweet, but naïve. Whether or not Salvadore’s name is on the exam attendance list, the reality is neither of them can prove what happened in Ted’s office that day. Once it comes down to his word against hers, that’s when records get opened up and it all becomes a trial by reputation. If you’re lucky, she’ll have previous black marks on hers. I’m assuming you’re so clean that you squeak.”

“That’s gross.” Teddy wrinkled his nose. “Just because I know she’s lying now doesn’t mean that she deserves that.” He trailed off. “There’s got to be some way to convince her to tell the truth without making this some kind of inquisition.”

“The whole department is behind you on this, Teddy,” Billy said, resting his hand on Teddy’s back. “And so are we. We’ll get through this. It’ll all work out. We’ll find a way.”

There was that Tommy-like flash in Billy’s expression again. Tom’s back got straighter, his shoulders pulling back and his eyes bright. But Billy didn’t say anything else to him, and eventually Tommy slouched again, as though there had been no change to anything, at all.

She kissed Tommy as they all left after lunch and he kissed her back. But his eyes followed Billy and Teddy as they left the building, and his mind stayed a million miles away.

\--

There were some amazing things about being a girl. Her tits, for one. Sweet-ass lacy garter belts for another. The whole scene where the lower half of her body begged for her to stab it to death with a toothless, rusty sawblade, because that would hurt less? Not so much.

She surveyed the lineup on the counter in her tiny kitchen. Full hot-water bottle, frozen ice pack, full package of milanos, and NetFlix tuned to ‘all John Hughes, all night.’ Golden. She might survive this one alive after all. Tom’s ratty green sweatpants bunched up around her bunny slippers as she padded into the living room, her sweatshirt sleeves pushed up around her elbows and her hair jammed up in a messy bun. This was the day for comfort, not glam. And for God’s sake, no boys.

So naturally, she’d been curled up around the hot water bottle for all of five minutes and barely broken through the _intro_ to Sixteen Candles when her phone rang. “Goddammit!” She grabbed for her phone, found the remote instead, and muted the movie with one hand while she shook out the afghan with the other. _And we gonna let it burn~_ blared from somewhere down around her knees. Her phone made it through almost an entire verse before she managed to find it, lodged between the cushions, ‘Dumbass’ flashing on the call display.

“Yo,” Darcy thumbed the phone on before she got it close to her head. She had a couple seconds of delay to get her limbs untangled from the afghan and the hot water bottle out from where it had settled against her ribs.

“…doing anything tonight?” Tom’s voice asked as she got the phone up to her ear. Horns honked and engines rumbled behind him, and it was hard to make him out over the traffic noise.

She settled back into the couch, wincing at the muscle spasm in her back, and pulled the ice pack in like an old friend. “Darcy’s one-stop booty shop is closed for renovations. Call back in three days when my uterus isn’t trying to dig its way out of my spine with a spork.”

There was a pause long enough that he might not have heard her. Then all he said was “a spork?”

“When you have a uterus, you can complain about my metaphors. Until then, shut it.”

“Oh.” Came the reply, then, “ohhhhh.” Yeah, the light had just clicked on for him, lucky bastard. “I’ll see you later, then.” So it had been just a booty call; she was unaccountably disappointed. Except that he sounded distant, tired, not making the obvious ‘red tide’ or ‘bloody Mary’ jokes that she’d have expected.

She propped the phone between her shoulder and her ear and tore into the bag of cookies. Sweet, sweet chocolate-filling perfection. “Hang on; didn’t you have a thing today?” There had been a major meeting of some kind. He’d been bitching about it while organizing a thousand pages of contracts into a closing book and methodically eating his way through an entire extra-large all-dressed pizza. With double cheese.

“Yeah,” came the answer, and the dead silence that followed set just about every alarm bell she had pinging off at top volume. That made the decision easier. As long as he accepted the fact that the cookies were all hers, and if he made one wrong move toward them she would fight him to the death. But there was no way in hell he was going to accept ‘you sound like shit, come over so I can make sure you’re going to be in one piece in the morning’ as an invitation.

“Right,” Darcy said aloud. “Do you have pants on?”

“I’m walking to the train, Darce.”

“So you do have pants on. That or I need to get you bail money. I’m running low on booze.” It would take him half an hour to get there on the train; plenty of time to hide the nearly full bottle of rum in the back of the cupboard under the sink, behind the eight million plastic bags she was never going to reuse. “If you’re at my door by nine with ice cream and wine, it’ll probably be unlocked.”

“Don’t wait up.”

He was there just under the wire, dark circles under his eyes and the tired slump of his shoulders in no way hidden by the stupid fake-it-till-you-make-it smile he had on. She knew that one; she used it herself all the goddamn time. He didn’t blink at the outfit, or the hot water bottle jammed down the back of her pants. He just grabbed two spoons out of the drawer while she got a couple of glasses from the cupboard, and hauled ass into the living room.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asked, when they were both sitting on the couch, his jacket and tie chucked in the corner like they offended him.

“Nope.” He popped the cork on the wine and filled their glasses almost to the brim.  

“‘kay.”

“Cheers.”

“Bottoms up.”

\--

She woke up somewhere around ten the next morning, still on the couch, and her head throbbing in time with her abdomen. Tom lay on top of her, still half-dressed, his head pillowed on her stomach and his arms wrapped around her like an overly affectionate octopus.

He smiled and muttered something in his sleep, turned his face into the spot of drool he’d left on her bellybutton. His stubble prickled against her skin, the faint blond hairs too pale to be seen unless she looked really closely. It was good, rough like a cat tongue, rubbing gently against her belly as he nuzzled back down into her.

Okay, so he was stupidly cute when he slept, his face all… squishy-soft and gentle. It was like looking back in time, seeing the kid he’d been before cynicism and disappointment had worn all his edges into sharp points.

Speaking of which. Darcy traced the lines of the small tattoo Tommy had on his hip, a yellow triangle over a brown one, the two stacked to form a six-pointed star. It was a funny spot for something like that, in the one place on his hip where it would always be covered, even if all he was wearing was a teeny speedo. “You’re not Jewish,” she’d said, confused, when they lay in bed one night. “Why do you have a Star of David on your butt?”

“It’s not my butt,” Tommy had said, then followed that up with, “Billy’s the Jewish one. I’m not anything.” Turned out his bio grandparents had been, though; one Jewish and one Roma. Tommy had gone searching for more branches off the family tree after he’d found Billy; kept it secret from him after Billy’s spectacular post-bio-mom depressive meltdown. Their biological grandparents had almost died at Auschwitz, he’d told her. The triangles were for them. Brown for Roma, yellow for Jews. ‘Two more ways to mark an outsider.’

She hadn’t asked him any more about it after that; he hadn’t given her the chance. The contemplative look in his eyes had vanished as he’d bounced out of bed to go make popcorn, pelting it at her when he came back with the paper bag in his hands. Point made.  

“You’re not an outsider here,” she murmured, oh-so-quietly, her hand splaying flat over Tommy’s hip. He mumbled something incoherent into her skin, mouthing at the pad of squish right beneath her belly button. “Weirdo,” she said affectionately, and laced her hand through his hair.

As nice as the snuggling was, though, she had to make a break for the bathroom before the place became a crime scene. By the time she got back Tom was sitting up and stretching. His face was back the way it usually was, all traces of the sleep-vulnerable little boy gone.

Well, no. Maybe not entirely. Because he curled into her, his cheek creased from sleeping on the fabric folds of her sweatshirt, and his hair sticking up in all directions. She ruffled his hair then combed it out again with her fingers, all silky-soft and pale. He nuzzled into her shoulder, his mouth resting against her breastbone, and he let out a contented sigh.

Home. That’s what his face looked like; home and warm and safe, and she was the one he was showing it to. Responsibility settled down over her shoulders, firm and weighty, until she shrugged it off with a blink and a frown, and a kiss pressed to the top of Tommy’s head. 

“I gotta run,” he said after a little while, sitting up again and trying to tug his shirt back into place. “Sorry about the, uh.” He gestured vaguely at the mess of her couch, afghan and pillows all over the place, wine glasses and the empty bottle still on the coffee table, and the last scoop of Half-Baked melted into a brown sludge in the bottom of the carton on the floor.

“It’s Saturday,” she felt compelled to point out. How badly had the merger-contract-meeting thing gone, if he was heading in to work on a Saturday? There were times when she appreciated being able to leave work at the office, and this was definitely one of them.   

Tommy just shrugged, like none of it bothered him. Like he hadn’t been one of the walking dead the night before. “Yeah, I know. Places to be, people to destroy. I’ll call,” he promised. It wasn’t the words so much as the way he squeezed her hand that made her believe him.

“You better,” she said, folding her arms like she was actually annoyed.

“It’s _me_ ,” he replied, his grin wide. She smacked him. Then he was gone, the door closing behind him and leaving her alone again.

_\--_

It wasn’t nice to pester Teddy, especially since he was basically a walking ray of sunshine on his better days, but worrying about someone else’s relationship issues made it easier not to think about what she and Tommy were doing. Or not doing. Or doing-but-not-ever-talking-about. Which on the one hand, yay. Despite the whole being-a-girl thing, she had never been interested in the kinds of relationship come-to-Jesus meetings that Cosmo always insisted she should be having on the regular.

On the other hand. Tommy should have been a brief fling, a couple of weeks of fun to get her through the holiday season. And here it was, middle of March, and they were still doing… something.

So when Teddy was showing up early again in the mornings, wearing his collars unbuttoned and no hickeys in sight, Darcy noticed. Not like it was easy to ignore Bill Kaplan moping around the place, staring forlornly at Teddy’s closed office door, only to vanish the moment the man himself appeared.

‘Trouble in paradise’ had probably been the wrong way to open that particular conversation, but man, had she gotten the distraction she needed. Teddy taking her head off for ‘not minding her own business’ was definitely not one of her more shining moments.

The chocolates he brought by later on as an apology made forgiving him easier.

Still, it sucked. Even beyond what Billy and Teddy’s fight (or what? No-one was talking to her about specifics, but something had obviously gone wrong), the tension in the office just kept on rising. Kate and Eli stopped their hushed conversations when either Billy or Teddy walked by, and despite everyone’s best efforts, the students were all buzzing about the whole Situation with Angel Salvadore.

And speaking of _that_ , the interview she had to do with legal had been one of the more ridiculous things in her life. Because of course, there were the answers she _had_ to give, and then there were all the things she thought, but didn’t say aloud.  

Had she ever seen Dr. Altman behaving inappropriately with a student? No.

 _Did a lot of the girls and some of the boys obviously_ want _him to? Yes. And she didn’t blame them in the slightest._

Had she ever seen Dr. Altman behaving inappropriately at work? No.

_Heard about, yes, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Bobbi-freaking-Morse not to sit on the couch in the theater department’s green room._

Has she ever known Dr. Altman to display poor judgment in personal matters? No.

_Well, there is the whole issue of him picking a fight with Bill’s boyfriend at Hallowe’en in front of the department, but it’s not like that had anything to do with anything._

Blah, blah, blah. On the plus side, at least she was only peripherally involved. The process had to suck so much worse for Teddy.

What it all boiled down to was that her regular hookup was slowly evolving into something strange while she wasn’t looking, and work was a lot more complicated than the way she preferred it. Sometimes, there wasn’t enough ice cream in the world.

\--

One way to get over a crappy day was to get distracted. Really, really distracted. Texting Tommy to ‘get your ass over here by 9’ had the right effect. By 8:55 p.m. she was sliding into the passenger side of his ridiculously hot car, kicking off her shoes and propping her feet up on the dashboard.

He didn’t even try and push them off anymore. Good boy.  

“Where to?” Tommy asked. He lounged back in the driver’s seat, one hand resting casually on the bottom of the steering wheel. He looked her over, short skirt, low-cut sweater and all, and grinned. “Paris? Boca? Maui?”

“What, and leave all this?” Darcy snarked, gesturing out the window at the gross grey muck that was New York in March. “I’ll bring my passport next time,” she promised, matching his grin. “You,” she stabbed his chest with her finger, “once promised me hot beemer makeouts. I’m calling in the marker.”

“Where do you want to go?” His happy response was immediate, the hand riding up her thigh warm and strong where he squeezed her. The flush of being _wanted_ ran through her and made the whole crappy last few days vanish entirely.  “Curb’s a bad idea. We’ll get busted for public indecency.”

“Never let it be said that I ignore my attorney’s advice. There’s a place on campus, behind the chem building? It’s private property so there are no police, and security doesn’t bother to patrol there.”

“Done and done.” The wheels screeched as he pulled away from the curb, her seatbelt still in her hand and the light at the corner turning yellow.

They’d barely slid in to the private space at the far end of the little parking garage when his hands were on her, sliding up her skirt, over the cuffs of her thigh-high wool socks. He groaned into her mouth, their lips locked together, and she kissed him again, kissed him deeper, dark and filthy. “C’mere.” Tommy shifted his seat back as far as it would go (not far) and pulled her into his lap to straddle his knees.

It wasn’t the most comfortable of hookups, that’s for damn sure. But by the time Tommy’s mouth was on her breasts through the thin cotton of her shirt, and she was rubbing off against the rock-hard bulge in his half-open slacks, she really didn’t care that her back was jammed into the steering wheel and her knee into the gearshift. She kissed him, grabbed his hard-on and stroked her thumb over the damp spot spreading across the front of his boxers. He rocked up against her hand, his palms flat against her ass, and he groaned like he was dying.

Heat; heat and pulsing need, and she was so fucking _empty_ that she was about ready to murder him for holding out on her by the time he shoved her panties aside and slipped two fingers down between her folds. Darcy jammed against his thumb and he kept it steady for her, right _there_ so she could get some serious clit action going. She worked a couple of fingers into the fly of his boxers and got some traction, pulling his dick out so she could stroke it properly.

“Oh hell yes,” Tommy agreed. He tickled down her spine; she squirmed and smacked him with her free hand. “Hey!”

“Behave, or I’ll stop,” she threatened, laughing. He thrust up against her crotch in retaliation, as if to say ‘no, you totally won’t.’

She totally wouldn’t.

Tommy opened her up with his hand, his mouth working on her throat, down to her cleavage and back again. Two fingers weren’t quite enough to fill her up, teasing and rubbing against the front of her cunt as she rocked down hard against his thumb. He bit at her nipples, left wet spots on her shirt from his mouth, into the circle of her hand so that the head of his dick was rubbing against her stomach as well.

“Fuck, _Darcy_ ,” Tommy groaned. That seemed to break the dam, the soft gasping and moaning from before turning into babbling, words spilling from him faster than she could follow.

“Shhhh, or we’ll get caught,” she giggled, breathless. Her warning turned into a loud moan when he abruptly added a third finger, pressed and scraped against her g-spot. “Oh yeah; mama like.” Her toes curled and she dug her nails into his shoulder as everything inside lit on _fire_. His cock was rigid steel in her hand and she stroked him furiously, hand grabbing tight, as he finger-fucked her.

_More more more there more, “FUCK!”_

She came in a rush, body shuddering and lightning crackling through her brain. Tommy’s thumb on her clit carried her through it, the fingers he had inside her still stroking gently, so gently, as she convulsed and rode out the aftershocks one at a time.

She needed to be a lot bendier to get down and suck him off properly in this teeny little sportscar, but hands were okay. At least he wasn’t complaining. It was like the opposite of complaining, really, his head thrown back against the headrest, his shirt half-unbuttoned and the hickeys she’d sucked there starting to turn purple.

Tommy’s slacks were only just pushed down far enough off his hips for her to get at his dick, and it was such a _nice_ dick. Like, the Platonic Form of dicks. Right now it was all wet at the top, his foreskin riding easily in her hand as she slicked it up and down. It didn’t take anything, really, just pressure from her thumb right under the head and a twist of her wrist, to get him coming all over both of them.

“Daaaaaamn,” he sighed as he relaxed into the seat. A goofy smile spread across his face and the hard edge vanished again, just like when he curled up in her arms to sleep. His breathing hitched, and she wiped her hand off on the tail of his shirt. “Aw, come on,” Tommy objected. He made a face at her, then popped the glove compartment and rummaged through it to find a handful of packaged wet wipes from a random variety of fast food places.

“Super classy, yo.”

“Better than using my _shirt_.”

“Whatever. It’s gotta go in the laundry anyway.”

“Shows what you know. Turn it inside out, it would have been good for another day at least.”

“Okay, I didn’t need to know that. Boys are officially stinky.”

“Don’t lie; you like how I stink.”

“As if!”

While cleanup was more complicated than just jumping in the shower, the nice thing about mostly-clothed car sex was that getting dressed again didn’t actually take much time. Darcy flopped back into the passenger seat, her clothes all tugged back into place, and draped her legs across Tommy’s lap while he buttoned his shirt back up. “So whatcha doing this weekend?” she asked, wriggling her socked toes in his lap. He shrugged. If it had been anyone else on the planet she could have sworn that he looked really uncomfortable for a minute, just before the diffident smile came back on his face.

“Nothing much,” he said, leaving his collar button undone and his shirt untucked. “There’s a thing Saturday night, but it’ll be dullsville.”

“A thing?”

“Work party,” and he made it sound like he hated the idea. But she remembered him at New Year’s. He’d made noises about hating work stuff then, too, and he’d moved through the crowds like he totally belonged in a mansion, bouncing from conversation to conversation and charming _everyone._ “The client is having a thing, and we all have to show up and shake hands. You’d hate it,” he said, sounding like he was apologizing. But for what? For having boring office parties, or for deciding not to bring her along?

“Yeah, sounds it,” Darcy shrugged it off. Or she tried to, her body still all loose and limber from the magic things that boy could do with his hands and mouth. _That’s what this is about, remember?_

She’d invited him to Tony’s thing, though. Unless maybe there was a no dates rule? But there were always dates invited to office parties. That was half the reason, to show off your hottie better half and brag ...

Oh.

_‘And what does a ‘Darcy’ do?’_

Yeah, okay. Fact one – Tommy cared a lot about impressing his bosses. He wanted to make partner, and had been totally obvious about his ambitions. Fact two – As far as at least Stane was concerned, Darcy was unimpressive. Fact three – a work party would involve Stane and the partners, and Tommy probably didn’t want to go through an interrogation like that again.

Logical conclusion: Tommy was embarrassed to introduce her to the rest of his firm, because she obviously didn’t fit in. _Corporate image_.

“I hate those things.” Tommy kept talking, but she was only half-listening. “Especially when they’re after work hours. Wanna go out afterward? We can hit a couple of clubs and shake off the week.”

“Sure,” Darcy agreed, folding her arms across her stomach and frowning at her smeared makeup in the rear view mirror. Clubs, where she wouldn’t stick out like the sore thumb that she apparently was. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, but she wasn’t feeling it. All of a sudden, she really wasn’t feeling it.  

\--

Tommy bailed on Saturday night. “I have to deal with some stuff.” He muttered something about Teddy being a dumbass, and his brother being a dumber-ass, but by then she’d stopped listening.

He texted her with just the word ‘hey’ in the middle of the night.

She ignored it.

\--

 _#17._ _Cares when I have a shit day_

\--

It was Billy, not Tommy, who came by her office on the first day of spring break, the hallways totally empty of students except for the handful of keeners who were always, _always_ on campus. Even half the faculty were taking the day off, or working from the library, anything except stare at the same four walls of their offices. So when Billy came in and stuck around after checking his mailbox, it was a bit weird. When he hovered at her desk, buzzing with impatience until she finished filing shit and sat down again, it was even weirder.

“If Tommy sent you to make nice,” she said, but stopped talking when he just looked confused.

“No, I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days,” Billy replied. His brow furrowed, just like Tommy’s sometimes did, and he started to open his mouth to say something, so she steamrolled him instead.

“Cool, never mind, what can I do you for, Doc?” She grabbed one of the fuzzy pens out of the mug on her desk and waved it at him. It was like waving a laser pointer in front of a cat. Academics were really easy to distract with shiny stuff.

“You know Dr. Selvig, right?” Billy asked, and it was so far off what she’d been expecting him to ask that she just blinked for a second before her mouth and brain caught up.

“Like, astrophysics Dr. Selvig?” When he nodded, she did too. “Yeah, sure. My bestie is one of his post-docs. How do you know him?” She leaned forward, jamming her elbows on the desk, previous stress forgotten. “Did you, like, find an ancient observatory or something? Are you going to co-author something with him on witches and equinoxes? Because that would be amazing.”

“No, nothing like that.” He looked even more uncomfortable, and a bit resolute. Sad, even, deep in his eyes. Whatever had happened between him and Teddy, she had the burning urge to smash their heads together for a while until whoever was at fault did some apologizing. “He runs the planetarium, and I know it’s not being used over break for anything. Is there any chance I could get the keys? Just for one night.”

“Why? What are you planning to do?” Darcy cocked her head, and then remembered. Mike from Security joking about the couch in the green room. Fucking Tommy in his car, that almost-the-same face tipped back and his lips red and open. “Never mind.” She waved off her last question with a wide grin. Could a minor kink like a taste for exhibitionism be genetic? Something to look up later. “Just tell me one thing. Will this make Teddy happy again, or piss him off?”

“Happy, I hope. I think. That’s the plan, anyway.” He scrubbed his hand back through his mop of dark hair, and pushed his thick-framed glasses back up on his nose. “Darcy, can you?”

“No promises,” she warned him, and waved her pen under his nose again. He tracked it automatically. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

\--

Two hours later, Tommy texted her. Whether Billy had said something or not, it was a nice gesture. She was still going to make Kaplan cough up for a decent dinner out in return for the planetarium keys.

This time, she texted back.

 _-_ -

10:32 pm. Darcy’s phone hadn’t bleeped or rung once. That meant that either Billy’s planetarium plan had worked, or Teddy had killed him and skipped town. She stretched out on Tommy’s couch and pushed her toes against the cushion at the far end. It dented under the pressure, springing back softly when she moved.

Tommy hung up, shoving his phone back in his pocket, a frown on his face. “Problems?” Darcy asked, tipping her head back to watch him pace. He’d been preoccupied all evening, even though he’d been the one who invited _her_ over, a stack of file folders on his kitchen table part of some hush-hush project he was working on that he wouldn’t – or couldn’t – explain.

“Teddy’s not answering,” Tommy said, and he flopped down on top of her on the couch. She squirmed over to give him some room by her side, and he blew a raspberry on her neck.

“He probably won’t.” She tickled him until he sat up, and she curled her legs under her. “Not unless your brother totally fucks this up.”

“Say what, now?”

“Billy’s doing a grand gesture thing on campus tonight. Faint heart never won fair historian, I guess.” Darcy grinned, and flicked his toe when he poked her. “I may have helped.”

“Oh great.” Tommy had his bitchface on, which was totally not what she expected. “That’s just what we need. Back to face-sucking codependence.”

“I think they’re cute,” Darcy shrugged. As cute as Teddy could be with anyone except _her_ , natch. And since that wasn’t going to happen, she would let Billy have him. She was magnanimous like that. “Who pissed in your cornflakes today?”

Tommy flopped backward, throwing his arms out along the back of the couch, and stopped clenching his jaw. “No-one. It’s fine. If my brother’s happy I’m happy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Billy’s got shitty taste in men,” he added after a moment. “I get suspicious when his streak breaks.”

“Look at you, being all lawyery and mistrusting,” Darcy snorted. He broke out of his funk at that, thank _God_ , and wandered off to the kitchen for a minute. When he came back he had two more beers in hand and a slip of paper.

“Here,” Tommy said, and handed her the note before popping the caps off the bottles. “I arranged a thing.”

“A what?”

“A job thing.” There was a name on the paper, a phone number and email address- salary range and...

Darcy sat upright, the vaguely tired vaguely bored floaty mood she had going totally shattered. “What the _fuck_ , Tommy?”

His spine went rigid and his expression went from pleased with himself to ‘wary of crazy lady,’ and for damned good reason. “I told you about this. Ms. Parfrey; she wants to make a run for mayor, and she’s a hell of a candidate. Women’s rights, better school budgets, all kinds of things that are right up your alley. Her campaign manager needs an assistant, and they want to meet you.”

“You told them about me?” Darcy got stuck on that. “You told me about _this?_ When?” She had a vague memory, Tommy wanting her to meet someone, but it hadn’t gone anywhere, and... “Why do you think I _want_ a new job? I never said I wanted a new job.”

“You’re wasted where you are, Darce.” Tommy gestured in the air, hands moving faster the more he spoke. “You’re better than photocopying and stuffing envelopes! If she wins you’d end up working at city hall! Paving the way for education and justice for all. That’s got to be a hell of a lot more interesting than filing expense reports for goofs like my brother.”

Oh that arrogant, patronizing fucker! “You don’t just _do_ that – who does that? Do they even know that you talked to them without telling me?”

Tommy threw his hands up on the air and she pushed herself up off the couch to get more distance. Leave NYCU? For a _possibility_ of a chance at a government gig? Sure, she wanted to see changes, who didn’t? But she had more than enough besides ‘stuffing envelopes’ to keep her busy right where she was.

“If you don’t want it, fine,” Tommy said, obviously unhappy. “But do yourself the favour of looking at it first.”

“Oh, this is a favor for me, is it? Not to make life easier on you?” Because that was the thing. It was Tommy’s idea, had always _been_ Tommy’s idea.

_So what does a ‘Darcy’ do?_

“How could this be about me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she pushed him back when he got up and came towards her, keeping the space between them. “Not having to introduce ‘just a secretary’ as your plus-one to your fancy legal friends?”

He didn’t get it, he just kept coming, trying to get close, looking more and more confused and disappointed with her by the second. And what right did he have to be disappointed? Just because she wasn’t happily falling in line with his big future plan? And when, exactly, had she _ever_ given him the impression that she would be easily led?

“You said yourself you’re more than ‘just a secretary,’” Tommy said. “Why shouldn’t they know what you’re really worth? You can do better with your life than making coffee for a bunch of bookworms.”

She wasn’t going to be held responsible if she punched him. She was gonna kick his ass. And then she was going to get Jane, and Sylvie, and _Wendy_ , and they were going to kick his ass collectively. “I’m gonna tell you right now, Shepherd, this is it,” Darcy said, and she jabbed her finger at his chest. It was probably a whole lot less threatening than she wanted, just dressed in one of his big t-shirts, with the rest of her clothes flung over the various bits of furniture in the living room and the bottom of her ass cheeks hanging out. But he was just in sweats, so at least they were on sort of even ground.

“This is me and if you don’t like that enough, then fuck it. Putting a prettier job title on me isn’t going to change the fact that I’m loud, my hair frizzes like fuck in the rain, and my tits can put a guy’s eye out at twenty paces. I happen to love my job. All of it. From the idiot professors who can’t keep a schedule straight to the incoming freshmen who needed transcripts two weeks ago and have breakdowns on the office floor. I’m a copier mechanic, a grant and scholarship expert, and a psycho-fucking-therapist. In front of a database? I am a goddamn _miracle_ worker.” She dragged in a breath, the sound hitching and _God_ , she wasn’t going to tear up in front of him.

Not _him_.

“And you-” she laughed, a short, sharp chuckle that had no humor in it. “You’re a fancy-pants lawyer, but you can’t even call me your girlfriend without having a stroke. Go find yourself some more ‘respectable’ arm candy if that’s what you want. Dr. Bishop, maybe. She’s got three college degrees versus my measly two, after all; she could help you look like a partner.” It was a low blow, but come the fuck on! She was Darcy-goddamn-Lewis, and she was no-one’s fixer-upper. Or their consolation prize.

“Like you’ve been so quick to go for the ‘boyfriend’ line?” Tommy shot back and that-

Okay. That was fair. But in her defense…

Hunh, no. She had nothing. Just a list, some assumptions, no ‘face-sucking codependence,’ and the growing feeling that they should have talked about a whole lot of stuff a long time ago.

No, no, _no._ What she _had_ was a guy who thought he could be some kind of Pygmalion or Henry Higgens and change her into what _he_ wanted, and that wasn’t going to happen.

“I thought you were cool, Shepherd,” Darcy said, instead of anything else. “Fuck you, and fuck your stupid job offer. All you care about is how you look to others. Well, I’m happy with who and what _I_ am.”

He didn’t say anything at all to that. She stormed off, grabbing her jeans from the back of the chair as she went by. He didn’t come find her as she grabbed the rest of her stuff. Toothbrush, hairbrush, a couple of bras from the bedroom. The first plastic bag she grabbed ripped when she shoved everything in, but the next one held.

She wasn’t going to cry.

He stood by the window and watched, not saying anything.

“I’m going,” she said.

He didn’t move. “Yeah, I got that.”

Whatever.

She’d almost made it to the door, everything flickering and red and angry around the edges of her vision. Then he finally said something, because god knew the assbutt would shrivel up and _die_ if he didn’t get the last word in.

“If you were really happy there,” he said quietly, “you wouldn’t care what I thought. So who’s shallow now?”

She slammed the door when she left. Really loudly.

It wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been.   

\--

She threw all her stuff in the laundry when she got home. Stupid Tommy and his stupid arrogance, and how did he ever imagine she’d pick up and walk away from _her_ department just on his say-so, and-

Her panties were missing. She hadn’t bothered to pull them back on when she left, going commando less of a pain than wandering around looking for them.

They were her favourite ones, too, blue lace that made her ass look like something from Sports Illustrated.

“Goddammit all to motherfucking **_hell!_** ” Darcy shouted, slamming the washer shut. Her own voice echoed back to her in the empty laundry room. “Stupid controlling patronizing condescending emotionally manipulative _bastard!_ ” She kicked the dryer and stubbed her toe, the pain lancing up her leg. The prickles came back to her eyes, and this time she didn’t fight them. She flopped down on the cold concrete floor, and she cried.

\--

“This is a major victory for the rights of the underserved-“ The familiar voice on the television, tuned to the news and muttering away to itself in the corner, made Darcy look up. She’d never been all that fussed about a quiet apartment before, but this week, she’d needed the background noise more than anything. There had been a hum missing around the place, one she didn’t care to think about too closely.

And yeah, there he was; Baldy Guy from Tommy’s office, Stane himself. He stood on the steps of the courthouse, briefcase in hand, looking terribly important and self-satisfied with whatever had just happened that was important enough to get them on the evening news. Tommy stood behind him, one step back and to the right, his suit pressed and his tie loosened at the neck.

She grabbed her phone.

 **Darcy:** Looking sharp, homefr-

Except she didn’t text Tommy anymore. He hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, not a single attempt at communication since she’d stormed out of his place in a huff a week ago.

 **~~Darcy:~~ ** ~~Looking sharp, homefr-~~

Did he think about her? Did he do what she just did, start to text and then give up? He’d get that frown across his forehead when he looked at the phone, the one that always made her want to flatten the creases out with her thumb.

If he wanted to talk to her again, he would have called.

“... end the tyranny of nuisance lawsuits...” Stane kept droning on, but he was just so much background noise. “... allow SI to spend its energy on the important things...”

Tommy didn’t get interviewed, he was just the junior counsel in the background, cute window dressing for the interview with the business correspondent of the day. But he looked so proud of what they’d accomplished (whatever it was), standing tall, his head high, cheeks flushed with victory and his eyes bright.

Accomplishing something real in the world.

_... making coffee... filing paperwork for goofs like my brother..._

Nope.

Darcy dropped her phone back on the couch amid the pile of knitting she was halfway through unravelling. He loved his job; good for him. She loved hers. If that still wasn’t good enough, Tommy Shepherd could lump it.

She didn’t need him.

She changed the channel, jacked up CMT to just below the level that would piss off the neighbors. The apartment had a lot of space that needed noise in it again. 

**\--**

There was nothing like a girls’ night to remind you that you were kind of a jerk. And that maybe Tommy wasn’t the only one capable of projecting old shit onto new people.

Fuck.

“I’m going to have to apologize, aren’t I?” Darcy kicked the bottom of Jane’s chair petulantly. “I hate apologizing.”

“Depends.” Wendy scanned the chocolate map with a frown of intense concentration before taking a triangle-shaped thing from the box. “How good _was_ the sex?”

“Wendy!” Jane looked horrified, tucking her knees up under her chin in her ratty old armchair. “You can’t base a relationship just on that.”

“Sez you,” Darcy snorted, from where she lay sprawled on the floor. She poked the spring in the couch experimentally, and Wendy dropped an M&M on her forehead. “We were doing just fine until he decided I wasn’t good enough.”

“Until he offered you an option to think about,” Wendy corrected her. “It’s not like he forged your signature on a resignation letter.”

“Why are you always on his side?”

“Because I understand the magnetic attraction of your rack. It makes people go stupid.”

“Ladies,” Jane dragged them back on topic, kicking and screaming. Well, sort of. The tequila was making everything a lot more mellow. “A little focus, please? The point is, maybe he’s got a point?”

“Very eloquent,” Darcy snorted from the floor. The M&M was staying balanced on her forehead, and she could see the red edges if she crossed her eyes just a little more… “That must be why they gave you the PhD.”

“Do you really want to be an admin forever?” Jane asked, ignoring Darcy. “You didn’t need a Masters for that.”

Wendy bobbled her head back and forth. “Ehhh. There’s a lot being said right now about grad degrees being the new undergrad. A lot of jobs like the extra credentials. But it never hurts to look around once in a while,” she pointed out. “See what else is out there that appeals to you.”

Darcy’s head swam. “Are we talking about jobs, or about boys, now?”

“Both?” Wendy said. She refilled her glass and handed one down to Darcy as well. “Whatever you end up doing, it can’t be about the guy. If it comes down to ‘keep job or keep boy,’ I’ll buy you a new toy from Bad Dragon.”

“Did you know they have ones that squirt?” Darcy kept up her end of the conversation, sort of, struggling to sit up and sip at the tequila in her glass. “Seriously.”

“I thought you were broke?” Jane frowned at Wendy.

“Fine; you can do it. You still _have_ funding.”

“Hey!”

“Point being, he’s not part of the equation.”

Darcy nodded along, everything warm around the edges of the world. Drinking to kill the edge was a really bad idea as a habit, but once in a while, it was practically necessary. “You’ll either make up or you won’t, based on a totally different and independent set of variables,” Jane added. “You got offered an interview for a job in your field. Pros and cons list.”

“Ugggggh,” Darcy groaned, but she put her glass carefully on the table and rested her chin on her knees. “Fine. Cons. Stupidly small stipend, only turns into something longer-term if the candidate wins, I deep-six my seniority at the college if I leave. I have decent insurance there, guys. Neither of you have ever left the system; you don’t know what it’s like out there. That’s not something to fuck with.”

“Pros?”

“In my field. I would get to work with someone interesting. Yeah, I googled her platform; she kind of rocks. If she can do half what she says she will, the city will be a million times better off. Being part of a team that’s actually doing good on a larger scale. Contacts for future jobs. The chance to work at city hall. Government pensions. Tommy gets to gloat.”

Jane frowned. “He’s immaterial.”

“Says you.” Darcy sat her chin against her knees and just let whatever was wandering through her mind work its own merry way out of her mouth. “The sex was awesome.” Except that wasn’t just it. That didn’t encompass the butterflies in her stomach when his name popped up on her phone, or the way everything tingled warm when she woke up and he was sprawled beside her, or the fizzy bubbles in her chest when he grinned at her, all cocky and with creases at the corner of his green eyes. “ _He’s_ awesome. I dunno. We just click, you know? He gets me. Even though he’s not Mr. Right.” Which he wasn’t, and she needed to remember that.

“Why not?”

“She’s got a List. Don’t ask.”

“Darcy Lewis.”

“Don’t talk over me,” she grumped at both of them; at Wendy for asking, and Jane for finking on her. “And shut up! I do. It’s all very good advice from my years of shitty relationships and dumb boys. Unlike _some_ people, I learn from my mistakes.”

“Wounded to the core.” Wendy clasped her hands over her heart and toppled backwards, landing full-length on the couch.

“So what are we learning from this one?” Jane cupped her chin in her hand and raised an eyebrow at Darcy. “Scientifically, and all. If,” she held up her hand, “Tommy didn’t exist and this fell into your lap anyway.”

“I’d probably do the interview,” Darcy admitted, after the silence stretched out. “Lose my mind from stress for three weeks, and then not take it. Because jumping head-first into a job prospect with no certain future, and the definite loss of health care, is not something I should be doing as a grownup,” Darcy grumped. “I’m no good at adulting, just so you know. Why can’t I have my job _and_ the cool opportunity, _and_ not have to apologize to Tommy because he maybe might have been a little bit not wrong?”

“The eternal questions that make up our storied existence,” Wendy intoned solemnly.

Jane refilled her glass and tinged it against their. “Pinkies up, ladies.”

“Cheers,” Darcy muttered. But her head was full of fragments of questions, and not all of them were clear and easy.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sand,” Darcy repeated into the phone. “Am I stuttering?” The astounded noise from the other end didn’t fill her with a whole lot of confidence. “Yeah. They filled the Annex common room with sand. One truckload, from what we can figure. We made them get rid of the beach umbrellas and deck chairs, but I gotta get the rest of it cleared up pronto.” She was banning engineers from the building, fuck Stark and the rest of his minions. If he wasn’t drinking all of Pepper’s good coffee, his students were enticing others into disasters of epic proportions.

“No, I have no idea how to code that work order. That’s why I phoned instead of doing it online.” Darcy rolled her eyes, secure in the knowledge that the goon from bookings on the other end couldn’t see her face. Kate Bishop did, though, and laughed as she dropped some envelopes onto Pepper’s desk.

“Yeah, well. See that it actually goes through, will you?” Darcy was not above wheedling. “The last thing we need in this building are sand fleas with engineer cooties.”

She hung up and Kate was still there, leaning against Pepper’s desk and casually flipping through the mail in her hand. “You can’t get sand fleas from sandbox sand,” she said sagely.

“How do you know what kind of sand they used?”

“I’ll never tell,” Kate said, smug. Then she poked her finger in the air at Darcy and put on an exaggerated scowl. “ _You_ didn’t come to poker last night.”

“Poke her? I hardly even know her!” Darcy cracked, but from the look on Kate’s face she’d been serious.

Poker? The faculty had a weekly game that Tommy went to sometimes, but admin staff weren’t on the invite list. Teddy and Billy were regulars, that much she knew, and sometimes she’d overheard Eli gloating about his winnings. She’d never expected to be a part of that crowd. Not really.

“I told Tommy to bring you.” Kate frowned. “He muttered something about ‘preventing an unholy alliance,’ but whatever.” She gestured dismissively. “It’s not like he knows anything about what’s good for him.”

Kate had this way of slicing through bullshit that made her an amazing researcher, but it was kind of disheartening having it directed at you. Darcy had always kind of liked her, spoiled little rich-girl act notwithstanding. Loyalty and a hundred chick flicks suggested the two of them were supposed to be lifelong rivals, but fighting over a boy took energy Darcy really didn’t have to spare. Not that Kate seemed like she was looking for a fight.

“He-” Darcy stopped talking, chewed on her thumbnail while she tried to decide how much to say. “We kind of, split up?” She said, and hated herself for how tentative it sounded. “I think. Events were hazy.”

Kate frowned. “He never said anything. Explains why he looks like crap, though,” she said offhandedly, and mostly to herself. “Did that just happen?”

“No; more like two weeks ago. He was being a butt, I said stuff I shouldn’t have, and we haven’t really talked since. Mind you,” she offered, as evidence of her confusion, “he hasn’t blocked me from texting him, and he hasn’t given me back my underwear. So.” That was _way_ too much information to be giving out at work, even though there weren’t any students around. Despite joking around she did _try_ to keep things somewhat professional, usually, but Kate didn’t seem to care. “I don’t know. I think we’re Facebook-complicated.” Darcy gave up.

“Uncomplicate-it,” Kate advised. “And even if you don’t,” she grinned, “come to poker night anyway. We need more girls to take Eli down a peg or two. His ego needs regular pricking.”

“I’ll see what my schedule looks like,” Darcy promised, and she was saved from anything more by Pepper coming back into the office.

“Did you hear about Dr. Gray?” Kate asked, and Darcy’s ears did pick up a bit at that. Office gossip, even about other departments, was a glorious return to the kind of ‘normal’ they’d all been missing around here.

“Hear what?” Pepper asked, cocking her head and looking up at Kate.

“She resigned again. This time she stuck a note on her office door about taking off to Peru to go raise llamas. Apparently ‘the academy is dead.’”

Darcy couldn’t find it in her to be surprised. “She’ll be back. I give it until September, latest.”

Pepper laughed softly, and Kate snorted. “True. It’s like Hotel California around this place. Check out any time you like-”

_But you can never leave._

So was that security a blessing, or a death sentence? 

\--

 **Darcy:** Yarrrrrrrrr

 **Darcy:** Cap’n Morgan says hellooooooo Tommy

 **Darcy:** Autocorrect wants me to say Captain but don’t wanna.

 **Darcy:** Fuck autocorrect anyway; what’s it ever done for me?

 **Darcy:** I miss you.

 **Darcy:** Are you there?

 **Darcy:** That’s a lie. I don’t miss you at all. I don’t miss anything about you, mr smarty pants dummy and your stupid sexy abs.

 **Darcy** : That’s also a lie.

 **Darcy:** Not the abs part.

 **Darcy:** Jane says I’m drunk and not allowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

\--

Three weeks, and not a single word from Tommy. Not even after what was apparently the most embarrassing drunk-texting she’d ever done. Not that she remembered it at all, but the evidence had been there clear as day when Jane gave her back the phone the next morning. Along with notice that she wasn’t allowed to drink tequila anymore.

Darcy’s stomach thoroughly agreed with her.

If even making herself a big, fat target for mockery hadn’t stirred any urges inside him, though, she probably had to consider the whole thing a lost cause. Not that she cared, or anything. He didn’t do apologies, after all. Or afterglow, or cuddles, or romance.

Such bullshit. Much wow.

 _He’s immaterial,_ Jane and Wendy had said. _Boys are a dime a dozen._ Easy for Jane to talk; she had Mr-nine-inch-nordic at her beck and call, and Wendy was the queen of straight-girl crushes.

Pepper wasn’t in the office, so Darcy slumped down at her desk and opened the browser again. The saved tabs flicked open; Lisa Parfrey’s bio, a handful of articles on the upcoming mayoral race, odds on the prospective candidates, average salaries for civil servants. The email from Ms. Parfrey thanking her for coming in to meet with the team, and suggesting that they schedule another one over a lunch.

_I wish I could just have both._

There had to be some way to wrangle it. She was supposed to be a scheduling genius, wasn’t she? Plenty of people volunteered for campaigns in their down time; it wouldn’t necessarily lead to a job later, but there was no guarantee of one _now_. She wasn’t a student anymore, couldn’t do anything with the various politics clubs, but the student vote was a major group that, when rallied, could be a make or break point for a candidate on the right side of the issues. She could be a campus liaison, or something.  

Tommy would have suggestions; he always said he wanted to hear her thoughts, even if he did drum his fingers on the table or fidget his toes up and down her leg while she talked. And he had good ideas, even when she didn’t want to hear them. Maybe especially the ones she didn’t want to hear.  

But Tommy was done with her, and she was done with his stupid face. And his twin brother was so busy fretting about Teddy’s legal problems, along with his own tenure reviews, that there was no way to get a straight answer out of Billy even if she’d wanted to. Googling – just once, because she wasn’t a creeper, just _concerned_ , seriously, _Jane_ – turned up nothing out of the ordinary going on with his firm; nothing that landed them in the news, anyway. Just the usual roster of corporate clients that barely warranted a passing mention from the court bloggers. Nothing that would have him looking exhausted or stressed-out enough to make Kate Bishop, of all people, worry about his health or state of mind.

Doing it again (because twice was only a little bit worse than once, and something could have changed in the last week) netted her the same result; nothing new at all about Stane-and-whoosits, no mentions of Tommy at all.

Voices echoed outside the office before Pepper and Teddy came into view. She closed out the windows quickly, sitting back in her chair. Teddy smiled at her, his hands full of bulletins and brightly-colored flyers, that perpetual worry-frown etched in his forehead again. It had been weeks, literal weeks, since anyone had been interviewed and while the office was usually the central hub of gossip in the building, Darcy had heard absolutely nothing new about the accusations, or his case. One more thing to drive her nuts today.

Pepper pushed a box in front of her as she came in, somehow managing to look elegant while she did it. Pepper Potts, deportment model.

“Morning, Teddy,” Darcy smiled at him, and that frown lifted off his face, just for a moment. “Oh good; is that our restock?” she asked Pepper, standing up to come help.

“I did a CostCo run this weekend.”

On her off-hours, because of course she did. Teddy just stared at them like he was confused by something. Pepper popped the box full of Kleenex boxes open and started stacking them in the cabinet below the printer. Just in time for the flood of stressed-out students who were about to realize that the end of term was barreling down on them like a bullet train. “Awesome,” Darcy said. Something else to focus on other than Big Important Life Decisions. “You gonna stand there, Teddy, or be useful?” Darcy poked him in the ribs with her finger and he bent to help them unpack.

At least there were still a lot of firm, round man-butts in the world, even if all she was allowed to do to this one was look.

\--

“Hello, is this Ms. Preston? Yes. This is Darcy Lewis. I’m calling regarding your offer for the campaign position. Sure, I’ll hold.”

\--

She ran out of time to worry about Tommy, because her weekend was dedicated to worrying about Teddy. D-day was Monday, the big tribunal which would have him facing off with legal and with Angel Salvadore. Sam Wilson supposedly had everything under control, at least to hear Pepper talk about it the few times she let something slip, but that didn’t stop Darcy from fretting. And if _she_ was a mess, Teddy and Billy had to be even worse.

Monday itself? That was pretty much a write-off. Everyone was walking around subdued, conversations starting and stopping when any of the first-floor faculty came within earshot. It was common knowledge that Kate, Eli, Billy and Teddy basically came as a set, and they were all getting handled with kid gloves.

She only got to wave to Sam as he headed over to Teddy’s office, then came out again with both Billy and Teddy on his heels. Ted vanished down the hall and Bill ducked into Kate’s office, the door closing fast behind him. He looked pale and much too nervous for any of this to be considered a shoe-in.

Diving into work was one of the only ways to distract herself for the next hour or two while Teddy’s fate was argued out on the other side of campus. Head down in the filing cabinet, she almost missed the slim blond shape heading purposefully down the hall. It was only the movement that made her stop and sit up, Tommy’s grey suit a slash of darkness against the pale paint on the walls. He looked over, caught her eye through the office window just for a moment.

Fuck him for being so beautiful, anyway. Even the frown that replaced his usual easy smirk was gorgeous, and it wasn’t just the month of celibacy talking. Her stomach twisted itself up inside, her heart trying to jump up out of her throat. She _missed_ him, the stupid butt, his clumsy attempts at fixing her life for her notwithstanding. Did that make her just as shallow as he was, or was she missing him for better reasons than just the way his clothes hugged his body, and the way his arms had hugged her waist?

Kate opened her door and he looked away. He disappeared into Kate’s office, the door closing behind them and cutting her off from their world.

Darcy slumped back in her chair and stared at her silent phone. It didn’t flash for any kind of incoming text.

Jerk.

She would text him herself, just to be clear, but he was obviously here for Billy, not for her. It wouldn’t be nice, or fair, to make this about them right now.

Double jerk.

Coordinating scholarship offers usually made the time fly, but the hour crawled by minute after agonizing minute. How was it going? Was Teddy being raked over the coals? Did legal believe his side of the story, after all the interviews and all the fact-finding? After the fourth time she glanced at the clock within two minutes, Darcy grabbed a post-it note and stuck it over the flashing display so it couldn’t torment her any longer. Half an hour down. How much longer would they be?

She put tape over the clocks on the computer screens, just to be on the safe side.

Kate’s door swung open and Billy’s voice echoed down the hall, spreading the news in the most efficient manner possible. “Teddy texted; he’s been exonerated!”

_Fuck yeah!_

The air whooshed out of her in a rush, her shoulders sagging as she collapsed, boneless, into the chair. She needed to be on the phone to Pepper like, yesterday. And then maybe Julie over at reception for the legal department, to see if she knew any more details.

Julie had a bit more information, something about a conspiracy to get Teddy fired, which didn’t make any sense on the surface; she’d have to drag the details out of Ted later. And speaking of which- He barreled down the hall, swinging into Kate’s office before she could wave him over, and from the noise behind the half-open door, it was serious celebration time.

Darcy hung up with Peppers and peeled the tape off of the monitors; it stuck to her fingers instead. She flicked it off, peeled one end back, then saw Teddy in the hall, heading her way.

Shreds of tape still stuck to her fingers, Darcy gave up and ran, pouncing on Teddy the moment he got close. She hugged him and held on for dear life as he spun her around, the big dumb dork, and she buried her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder until he set her down again.

“Bill yelled the good news down the hall when you texted,” she informed him with a grin, and he set her back down on her feet again. “You got trumped, big guy.” The bits of tape had peeled themselves off her fingers and stuck to the back of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s fine,” he grinned, and he was even standing taller than he had been for weeks. “It’s good; it’s all good. Does Pepper know?”

“She does,” Darcy promised. “She had to go sort some printer thing out for Misty and Danny upstairs, but she said to hug you if you got back before she did.” That was kind of an exaggeration; she’d just said to call her and let her know the outcome. But extra hugs were always good.

Teddy hugged her again, burying his face in her hair. She hung on, and he was solid, warm and sure. For the first time, though, it felt more like the kind of hug a brother would give. Weirdly enough, she was okay with that. “Thank you,” he said into her curls,and God, he was a cutie pie. “If it hadn’t been for all the evidence that Tom dug up, she’d never have retracted.”

 _Wait,_ what _? Tom did_ what _now?_

“I know you probably can’t say anything if you helped, but thank you, anyway. He saved my butt.”

Something big had happened of which she had been entirely unaware. That was absolutely unacceptable, on so many levels. Sooooo many. Tom had been digging up evidence for Teddy’s case, at the same time as still putting in stupid-long billing hours at his firm? He’d … what? Been out pounding the streets searching for clues, paying off informants, sliding bribes into the hands of people willing to look the other way so that he could access sealed records?

_I watch too many procedurals._

Teddy let go of her and stepped back, with the guilty look on his face like he was only just realizing that he’d said something he shouldn’t have.

“Tom was helping you?” she asked, jumping in with questions before he could backpedal entirely.

“Yeah.” Teddy scuffed his hand over the back of his neck and looked embarrassed. “He pulled some strings, I think. I don’t know the exact details. But he’s the one who found all the evidence about the set-up, and he sent it all in to Sitwell. It had to have taken him weeks…”

She tuned out. Kate’s door was still open and she could half-see Tommy standing near it, flashes of his fair hair and grey suit moving through the gap and getting caught in the light.

#8. _Altruistic._

_All you care about is how you look to others._

Fuck, fuck, fuck. _I fucked up._

But she had a chance, right now, to make it all better. She patted Teddy on the center of his chest, only partially aware that he’d already stopped talking. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, then let it go.

Tommy stood in the door now, getting ready to bail. She parked herself between him and the hallway, arms folded in front of her. “Hey,” she tried, searching his face for some kind of clue as to what was in his mind. She couldn’t do serious, not if her life depended in it, and the cloud was already starting to descend over his eyes. “You stopped texting me back, dumbass,” she tried, her tone gentler than her words. “I thought you might have run off to join the Hari Krishnas, or something.”

“I think Krishnas still get to use cell phones,” was all he said.

“Amish, then,” Darcy suggested, and got a brittle edge of a smile back. “Got a minute?” she asked, and cocked her head toward an alcove that looked out over the courtyard. Private-ish, but not closed off so much that he would have to worry about her murdering him without witnesses.

“Yeah, sure,” he agreed, glancing back into Kate’s office before sliding his hands in his pockets and following her. “What’s going on, Darcy?” He paused, his face blanching. “You’re not-” he gestured at her stomach region, with an expression like someone had taken a bat to the back of his head. “Or anything like that, right?”

“Oh _God_ no.” She recoiled in horror at the idea, and he relaxed a lot more than he had been. “Jesus, what a clusterfuck _that_ would be.” But at least the question had broken the ice some, and it was easier to keep talking once she’d started. “No. I -  uh.” And this was like having her teeth pulled out with pliers one by one, but it had to be done. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he frowned. “I said a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have. I meant to hurt your feelings, and that was supremely shitty of me.”

“Kind of, yeah.” Tommy shook off whatever funk was sitting low over his head. “But it’s cool. I mean, it’s not _cool_ in that it was fun, but the past is the past. No sense dragging up old stuff to worry about now.”

And that sounded a lot like he was dumping her again, which, no. Not without a fight. Another one.

“Teddy told me what you did,” she said, and let her face show just how cool that was. “Here I thought you were a Jersey mobster, Speedy, not a Private Dick.”

He snorted, actually snorted with laughter, and that was when _she_ got to relax some, too. “I still don’t have a good hat,” he made his excuses. “Yeah. I called some people. Did some stuff.” He waved it off like it was nothing. “With that plus the assholes at work getting up my butt this month, it’s been really stupid. I can’t get anything done fast enough for them.”

It wasn’t quite an apology for the silent treatment, but it was getting there.

 “I didn’t take the job,” Darcy confessed, since they were apparently laying shit out on the table now.

“I know.” He fidgeted, uncomfortable again, like he was waiting for her to yell.

“But I _did_ arrange to volunteer with the campaign,” she added, and that he apparently didn’t know. “I’m going to be doing campus outreach stuff. And I’ve been talking to Carol about putting a new lecture series together; history of voting rights and universal suffrage. I think we can probably get Steve and Jess in on that as well. Maybe Luke or Misty, too. Which should be cool. You were right, even if you went about it ass-backwards.”

Tommy fidgeted, tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh. “Whatever you want to believe, I didn’t do it because I was embarrassed. You’re hotter eye candy than anyone else at those boring corporate dos. I’d rather be hanging out with you any day.”

“You just what, then?” she asked,

“Want you to want to be more,” he exploded with it, like he’d been sitting on the explanation for months instead of weeks. “There’s a whole world out there waiting for us, Darce. Why get stuck in one place, doing one thing, for so long?”

“Sometimes it’s okay to hang in one place for a while, you know.” And because once, ages ago, Tommy had asked her to stay without using those words, she kept going. “Or with one person. Sometimes it doesn’t all end in shit.”

He stopped, looked at her and grinned, that wider-than-a-smirk actually happy grin that didn’t have anything to do with work, or jobs, or Teddy. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”

Teddy passed by on his way down the hallway. He stopped for a second, but didn’t come closer, and she ignored him.

“Come for lunch,” Tommy asked, an olive branch. “We’re taking Billy and Teddy out to celebrate.”

“I can’t,” Darcy said reluctantly. Tommy closed down as she refused, his arms folding across him like a shield. “I have to cover the office.” As if that would make things any better.

“Oh. Yeah, okay. That’s fine.” Tom ducked his head, but didn’t walk away.

Darcy shrugged and tipped her head to the side. “What about tonight? I’m off at 4:30.”

“Is this just a way to get your panties back?” he asked, not giving her a straight answer one way or the other. “Because I can mail ‘em, if that’s the deal.”

“Keep them,” Darcy said, because he was still there behind the wall of sarcasm and bluster he was rapidly building back up around his feelings. “I can get them next time I stay over. Or, you know, make you model them and tear them off you with my teeth.”

That one got through to him, his arms coming down and a surprised laugh bursting out. He reached out to her and she leaned in, let him cup her cheek with his hand. His palm was warm and soft, his arm strong, and she could lean into him and let him support her without any fear of falling. Darcy rose up on her toes and kissed him, a soft, sweet press of her lips against his, and for a moment he didn’t respond.

_I fucked up real bad._

But then he did, kissing back, his body melting into hers like she was the one holding _him_ up instead.

“I have to work until seven or so,” he said, pulling back finally and curling his lower lip under against his teeth. “I’ll come by your place to pick you up after that?”

Darcy nodded, tossing her hair just to show him that she was totally not flustered, too. Really. “Sounds good,” she said. “Don’t be late, or I might start without you.”

\--

“Fuck, Darce, I love your mouth. It’s like every wet dream I’ve ever had, all at once.”

“You have a thing for the red lipstick, hunh?”

“On you, hell yeah.”

“Mmph. Oh fuck _you_ , asshole!”

“What? What did I do this time?”

“You had asparagus for lunch.”

“… yeah. Shit. I didn’t exactly know we were going to end up like this, you know.”

“Unh-hunh. I’m instilling a lifetime ban.”

“In return for what?”

“You ever getting your dick sucked again.”

“...  Sounds fair.”

\--

Darcy woke up before her alarm went off, sore in all the right places, and curled around a warm and softly-snoring Tommy. She wasn’t quite tall enough, so her knees tucked in behind his meant her face was mashed into his shoulderblades. But he smelled good, hints of deodorant and aftershave, and the faint tang of sweat. His skin warmed her cheek where she pressed against him, muscles playing beneath the surface when he rolled. He muttered something incoherent and turned his face into the pillow, his arms wrapped around his chest and the rest of him curled up into a tight ball. She flattened her hand against his chest and drifted off again, just like that.

\--

The alarm needed to die. Horribly. Smacking at it helplessly finally managed to turn it off, and her bed was already empty. Had Tommy bailed? His balled-up shirt down at the end of the bed and clanking from the kitchen suggested not.

Darcy padded out in her bare feet, buttoning Tommy’s shirt most of the way down. He was pawing through her cabinets, the coffee maker sitting out on the counter. His boxers sat low on his hips, red marks down his ribs temporary reminders that she’d staked her claim again. His hair flopped over his face, stuck up in the back, and he looked so perfect in that ridiculous tiny, grungy space that something warm and fuzzy opened up in the middle of her chest.

“Above the microwave,” she said, and Tommy turned, smiled, and that warm fuzzy thing soaked into her skin from the outside, too. He found the coffee easily after that, and she boosted herself up to sit on the counter next to him and watch him work. They’d fallen into bed the night before so quickly and so easily, that a lot of junk still hadn’t been said that they probably should have.

“That thing you did for Teddy,” she started, running her palm over the swell of the muscles in his shoulders. Because it _had_ been something amazing, considering that he still didn’t seem to like Teddy all that much. He left all his prickles on when Teddy was around. She could see the difference easily enough, now.

“Whatever.” Tommy leaned into her hand but shrugged off the compliment she was aiming for. “Billy’s bitching and moaning was driving me insane.”

Darcy snorted, because he was so busted, even if he hadn’t realized it yet. “Yeah. God forbid you should be caught caring about anyone.”

Tommy looked at her from the corner of his eye, and filled the carafe at the sink, the early morning sun filtering through the curtain. “I _don’t_ care.” He was such a liar.

“I said ‘be caught’.” Darcy poked him in the ribs with her toe, and he squirmed away. “I’m on to you, Shepherd.”

“Whatever you say.” He snorted, but looked secretly pleased.

“Why is that such a bad thing?” She flipped open the top of the machine when he stared at it with bleary morning eyes. “Billy’s your brother and Teddy’s his guy; of course you care about what happens to them. That’s family.” It was what Jane and Wendy were for her, even without the bonds of blood to keep them together. It wasn’t like Tommy and Billy had grown up together, so maybe it was even more like her girls than she had originally considered.

“Billy doesn’t think of me as family,” Tommy pointed out, setting the machine to go. He rested his hands on her knees, and he went very, very still. “He’s got Ted to talk to, and brothers that he has major history with. I’m just the annoying guy who shares his face.”

“Bullshit,” Darcy said, and pushed his bangs back off his forehead. “You’re twins; there’s, like, psychic bonds there and stuff. You’re two halves of the same soul. I’m just glad you got the hetero part of the brain.” She made a joke of it before she got too touchy-feely on him.

She was still missing something, something he’d said once that was more important than just feeling out of place, or like a … a Tommy-come-lately.

“It’s fine,” he lied through his teeth. “You can’t show up eighteen years into someone’s life and expect it to be like you’ve been there all along. We’ve both got our own shit to do.”

“Oh my God,” Darcy blurted out, the penny finally dropping. The way he hung out at the college all the time, his crush on Billy’s bestie, the faint distaste he’d had for Nate that had transferred over to Teddy in the beginning. “I get it now. You wanted to be his Person.” It made way too much sense, and her heart hurt for him.

Tommy didn’t get it. “His what?”

“You never watched _Grey’s_?” Darcy feigned shock because yeah, not his style. “Talk about missing out on the zeitgeist. It’s a...” She changed her mind. “Forget it; it’s not important where it came from. His ‘person’ - the one he goes to with stuff. The main guy in his life. Not like that, don’t make faces.” She smacked him in the shoulder when he grimaced at her. “The guy who’d call you if he needed help hiding a body.”

“If he has to hide a body,” Tommy said, “he’d be better off calling a criminal lawyer.” He was totally deflecting, his grin bright and plastic.

Darcy looped her arms around his neck before he could wander off to go wash coffee mugs, or something. “For a super-smart lawyer guy? You’re actually kind of dumb.”

Tommy looked down, his hands braced on either side of her hips on the countertop. “If this is the way you apologize for being mean to me, you’re missing the mark.”

“He loves you, you know that.”

He did pull away then, grabbing mugs from the drainer and starting to pour the coffee before it was really done. “Because I’m just so damn lovable, right?”

She kicked her heels against the counter and smiled. “Could be.” And there was that warm fuzzy thing again, burrowing deeper into her gut and spreading out along her limbs. It didn’t need a name, not really, but she knew what she would call it if someone hit her with truth serum or something.

Tommy didn’t say anything, just looked at her like he was waiting for the punchline, and her heart broke a little bit for his sake. His face softened as they stayed like that, his eyes so very bright and green. _Yeah, that_ , she thought at him, and he smiled like he’d heard her.

He broke first. His hand came up partway, twitched toward her before he dropped it onto the counter again. She ruffled his hair and he leaned into it despite his grimace. “You’re cracked, Lewis,” was all he said.

“Whatever, punk.” She said, so fondly. But then they were careening awfully close to the edge of sentimental, so she shoved him in the shoulder instead. “Put some sugar in my coffee before I steal your pants as well and bail for Starbucks.”

“Never happen.” Tommy shook his head, and flexed his biceps at her. “Starbucks baristas don’t hang out in their underwear.”

“True. But you have to ask whether the price is worth the view.” She pretended to give it serious thought, ending only when he flicked cold water at her from the sink, splattering drops down the front of his white shirt where it rested over her breasts.

They were both going to be late for work. She let him pull her in, his mouth hot along the inside of her naked thigh. She couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.

\--

It was better for her attendance record at work that they didn’t spend every night together; keeping it mostly to weekends as the semester wrapped up was one way to both get her gitchie on and make sure she didn’t have to give man-in-bed as a reason to Pepper for why she was skidding into the office late on a regular basis.

All of which explained why it was her phone that was ringing at three in the fucking morning on a Wednesday, instead of Tommy rolling over to poke her awake.

“If you’re calling for phone sex, you’re fired,” Darcy growled into the phone, her eyes still tightly closed against the night.

Why was he up at three on a weekday? Her memory ticked over a few times before the engine caught. Booze-em-up with out of town clients. Stane and some CEOs from … San Fransisco. See? She could do the good-girlfriend thing.

“Hey Darce – if I needed to hide a body-”

He was definitely tipsy, his words coming out in that careful enunciation of the not-quite-wasted. ... Body?

Hell. If he needed to ask, he had a reason. “Where and when?”  

“Hypothetically speaking,” he added, and she remembered.

“I know all the best spots,” Darcy said softly.

“I figured you might.” The darkness was warm, folding around her in the sound of his voice.

And there went the alarm again. Darcy smacked at it with her hand, not willing to come out from under the roll of covers. It was light outside when it hadn’t been a minute ago, when she’d been on the phone with-

She rubbed her face, bumping against something hard half-hidden under the pillow. Her phone, the line still open, and the keypad covered in drool. “G’morning,” she muttered into it. “Don’t commit homicide.”

“Fggghhnnnng,” came the waking-up noise from the other end.

“Good boy.” She hung up and headed for the shower, humming.

\--

“If I don’t get out of this town,” Tommy announced, setting their glasses down on the table. “I’m going to explode.”

“How long are we talking, here?” Darcy sipped her fruity margarita thingy with a noise of appreciation. Going for drinks had gotten a lot more entertaining once she discovered the twitch that Tommy got beside his eye when he had to carry the ones with umbrellas and fruit salads speared on plastic pirate swords. This one was bright warp-core blue, and would probably dye her tongue as well.Would it last long enough to turn his dick neon later? “A long weekend, or are we talking ‘sister, let’s trash this popsicle stand’?”

Tommy sprawled in his chair, hands curling around the sturdy pint glass in front of him. “As tempting as it might be to blow everything to hell and go out in a blaze of glory,” he began.

“Ooh, violent. Bad week?” She could afford to be cheerful; term was over, no-one had died, almost everyone had passed, and the office was in that beautiful two-week lull until summer classes started.

“I was thinking longer than two days, not as long a ‘trip upstate’ as going Bonnie and Clyde would need.”

“Oh good.” She mouthed her straw to get it closer to her, and he watched her lips with appreciation. “I don’t think I have that much vacation time accrued.”

The club thumped and bumped around them, the music loud and the crowd wild. It wasn’t quite summer yet but that didn’t seem to matter to the hardbodies on the dance floor, shirts coming off all over the place and miniskirts riding high up thighs. She wanted to be out there, and from the way Tommy’s feet were tapping, he was feeling it too. “What did you have in mind?”

He grinned brazenly, that wide smile he put on when he was pretty sure he was going to get turned down or laughed at. “Road trip,” he said, and that wasn’t at all what she’d expected either.

“In the pussy-wagon?” Darcy asked, and he choked on his beer.

“That car is more than just a pick-up-mobile, I’ll have you know,” he said, insulted. “And it’s not just for ‘appearances,’ either.” She closed her mouth on the joke she’d been about to make.

Tommy put his elbows on the table and got less cocky, more subdued. For him, anyway, which was like ebullient for someone else. “Sometimes I just have to get out of here,” he confessed, and she leaned closer to make sure she didn’t miss anything under the beat. “I love the city, but sometimes you just have to-” he gestured in the air and didn’t finish his sentence. “With the car, no matter what bullshit happens during the week, I can get the hell out of town. Find the world’s biggest ball of twine, or whatever. Just… take off for a couple of days and be someplace else.”

Darcy sipped her drink and turned the idea over in her mind. “I never pictured you as a road warrior,” she teased. The whole ‘call of the open road’ thing was for, like, truckers and country boys with pickup trucks and no solid futures in sight.

“You don’t have to make it sound so dorky,” he complained. “I just want to get out of New York, go for a really fucking long drive and see some actual stars for once.” His eyes went soft, and her breath caught in her throat. “With you.”

Her mouth went dry, her heart hammering in her chest, and she grinned to take the edge off what, from him, was practically a declaration of eternal devotion. “Your romantic’s showing through, Shepherd. Unless this is some kind of Kerouackian self-actualization thing, in which case, read more modern lit.”

He actually pouted, crossing his arms. “I can be romantic if I want to.”

Oh, and this she had to see. She grinned wide, and he flicked an eyebrow up at her. “Prove it,” she taunted, her lips almost brushing his ear.  

“Road trip,” he announced. He turned right into her space, his lips were all but pressed against hers. His breath puffed hot over her lips, his eyes so damned green. “You and me. Two weeks, one bag each, a map of the eastern seaboard, and no plans.”

“How very 1960s of you.”

“Time of your life, babe, or your money back.”

There was nothing else for it, then, but to kiss him. And kiss him. And get kicked out of the club for ‘lewd display’ twenty minutes later, without a single fucking regret in the world.

\--

Darcy woke up alone the first morning of her vacation, her duffle bag open on her floor and most of her clothes inside, her phone blinking at her merrily. Pack the rest – brush her teeth and throw her makeup in a case – one more sweep of the apartment to make sure nothing was going to rot and fester, and she was ready to roll.

A half-drunk all-cold cup of tea sat on her computer desk and she grabbed it, mopping up the place it had sloshed over with her sleeve. Nothing damaged, thankfully, except a purse-pack of Kleenex and a folded paper that looked familiar.

She set the tea down and opened the page, unfolding it carefully over top of the damp tissues so it could drip dry there.

 _Mr. Right_ , it said at the top, in purple glitter pen. The list ran down from there. _Single. Romantic. Good-looking. Doesn’t snap bras._

Tommy failed on that one. But she’d been wearing his boxer briefs and stuffing the front with socks to make it look like a dick bulge while he was trying to pack, so she’d probably deserved it.

It was a ridiculous relic from a more innocent time in her life, and she was better off with the guy she had. The damp paper crumpled in her hand and she lobbed it at the garbage can. The wad of paper circled the rim of the can and fell inside, and the words on it flashed behind her eyes.

_Makes me laugh. Altruistic. Good in bed. Smart. Confident. Cares._

_Picks up his fucking socks._

She dove for the garbage can and sorted through the handful of crumpled pages on top until she found the tea-damp one she was looking for. She smoothed it out, careful not to rip it, and read it over one more time.

Darcy smiled. Something expanded, floaty and warm, inside her chest. She was getting used to that, the sudden feeling of lightheadedness, the tingling heat that started in her heart, now, before it spread down through the rest of her body.

 _Love,_ she might say. _Love,_ Tommy probably wouldn’t. But he looked at her like she hung the moon in the sky, drew circles in the palm of her hand with the pad of his thumb, and pressed soft kisses to the round curves of her stomach as she was falling asleep in his arms.

Close enough.

She tacked the list to the bulletin board hanging on the wall above her desk.

Wait; that was too... something-something-serious. The printer whirred a few minutes later, spat out a photograph that was pixilated from being snapped with her old phone, in the dark. Tommy’s sleeping face was in the center, mashed against the pillow, his bottom lip poking out in that little-boy pout he insisted he never made.

She pushed a pin through it and stuck the photo up on top of the list. And drew a mustache on it, just because it cried out for one.

There.

The car honked outside, and she grabbed her bag, jammed her hat on her head, and locked the door of her apartment behind her.

“Cool your jets, Speedy Wonder,” Darcy called out. Tommy popped the beemer’s trunk, and she slung her bag inside to land beside his. The top of the car was down, he wore shades that were almost as cool as the car, and she hopped over the door Duke-boy style to slide into the passenger seat. He kissed her hello, deep and raw, his hands already wandering down her sides.

“Ready to go?” Tommy asked after a minute, her hands balled up in the thin fabric of his t-shirt and her hair a mess under her beanie.

“Hell yeah.” It took a minute to convince her fingers to uncurl, but she settled in her seat and strapped in. He pulled away from the curb, the picture of cool, except for the wide and vaguely goofy grin on his face. Good stuff.

Traffic, naturally, slowed the getaway to a crawl, but the sun shone down on them and warmed her skin, the noises of the city surrounded them for the last time for the next two weeks, and life was looking pretty damn good.

“We should probably be back by next Friday,” Tommy said out of the blue. He drummed on the steering wheel, his hands resting easily at the bottom. “It’s only a day early, but Jeff and Rebecca have this whole thing planned for the run-up to Aaron’s wedding.”

“Aaron, as in your brother’s brother?” Darcy teased, kicking off her shoes and wiggling her toes against the dashboard. “Your family is really screwy, dude.”

Tommy snorted. “You haven’t seen the half of it. Wait until you meet Bubbe Rose.”

“I’m invited, am I?”

“If you don’t want to-”

“Never said that. The more blackmail material I can collect on you, the better.”

She dug in her purse until she found her iPod, and plugged it into the dashboard jack before Tommy could stop her. He glanced at it, and at her bare feet (rainbow nails) up on the dash, and all he did was grin. Traffic thinned out as they hit the bridge, the city receding behind them and the open road beckoning. She jacked the music loud, rested her arm on the cool rubber line of the window seal, and sang along at the top of her lungs.

_Country road, take me home; to the place I belong. West Virginia, mountain mama; take me home, country road._

 

_ _

**Author's Note:**

> \- asparagus has a very interesting after-effect – for a few hours after eating, it adds a very distinctive unpleasant taste and odor to particular bodily fluids, semen among them.  
> Darcy’s list:  
> 1\. Single  
> 2\. Romantic  
> 3\. Cute  
> 4\. Doesn’t snap bras  
> 5\. Likes sports but doesn’t like like sports  
> 6\. Taller than me  
> 7\. Makes me laugh  
> 8\. Altruistic  
> 9\. Shows up on time. Or at least calls if things change.  
> 10\. Great in bed / willing to experiment.  
> 11\. Takes no for an answer  
> 12\. Smart  
> 13\. Picks up his fucking socks  
> 14\. No drugs  
> 15\. Confident  
> 16\. Has basic social skills  
> 17\. Cares when I have a shit day  
> 18\. Financially responsible  
> 19\. Doesn’t want a housewife  
> 20\. Maybe doesn’t even want kids  
> 21\. Interested in girls
> 
> \--
> 
> Songs from Tommy’s valentine’s playlist:  
> Jim Croce – I Got a Name  
> Simon and Garfunkel – America  
> And the quoted stanza is from Gordon Lightfoot, “I’m Not Sayin’ / Ribbon Of Darkness medly”
> 
> \--


End file.
